HeadwayOne workspace replaces the planning tool stack.
A planning team today pays for — or hand-builds — a scenario tool, an access subscription, GIS seats for equity joins, NTD spreadsheet pulls, and Grants.gov email alerts. HeadwayForge covers that whole planning workflow in one pre-loaded workspace, with transparent pricing and zero data onboarding. The honest caveat: scheduling, run-cutting, and dispatch are deliberately not our business — we coexist with those systems, and during transition we run alongside whatever you already have.
What HeadwayForge replaces — and what it deliberately doesn't
The replacement case, tool by tool. Where a category is planning work, we cover it; where it's scheduling or live operations, we integrate and coexist.
| Category | Examples | Where HeadwayForge stands |
|---|---|---|
| Service planning & scenarios | Remix | Replaces for the planning workflow. Scenario design is one module here, not the whole product — alongside Title VI automation, R5 access, NTD benchmarking, funding intelligence, and an AI knowledge layer, with public pricing instead of a quote-only sales cycle and no per-agency data onboarding. |
| Accessibility analysis | Conveyal, r5py | Replaces. HeadwayForge embeds the same R5 routing engine and runs it against already-loaded GTFS, OpenStreetMap, and Census data — isochrones and jobs-access counts with the equity split built in, no separate subscription or pipeline. |
| GIS for transit analysis | ArcGIS + analyst queue | Replaces the repeated transit workflows. The buffer equity joins, coverage maps, and demographic overlays planners wait in the GIS queue for are productized; keep GIS for the work that's genuinely cartographic. |
| Operations data | Swiftly | Coexists. Live ops monitoring is their lane. HeadwayForge analyzes GTFS-Realtime for planning — OTP, delay, occupancy trends feeding service decisions — and ingests APC/AVL through connectors on the Agency plan. |
| Scheduling & run-cutting | Optibus, HASTUS, Trapeze | Coexists, by design. We never bid against run-cutting. HeadwayForge sits on top of their GTFS exports as the analytics, equity, and funding layer. |
| The status quo | Excel, ArcGIS, five data portals, consultant memos | The real competitor — and the real replacement target. Most US agencies run planning on spreadsheets rebuilt every pick. HeadwayForge replaces that with speed, repeatability, and defensibility. |
Manual work is slow, fragile, and hard to defend
A planner's job is largely data plumbing and compliance paperwork rebuilt by hand every cycle — the Title VI analysis alone can eat six weeks of a spring. With planners scarce and IIJA's $108 billion arriving with compliance strings attached, that manual stack is the thing agencies can least afford. HeadwayForge replaces it with a workflow whose numbers stay consistent from map to memo to board packet.
Speed
From question to data-backed answer in minutes — the GTFS, Census, NTD, and jobs data is already joined, so nobody re-stitches it by hand.
Repeatability
The same analysis runs the same way every cycle and every agency — no rebuilding the spreadsheet each pick, no copy-paste drift, no methodology living in one analyst's head.
Defensibility
Every output traces to its source data, vintages, and assumptions — the difference between an analysis that survives an FTA triennial review and one that doesn't.
Replace the stack on your timeline, not ours
- Start free on public data — your agency is already loaded, so evaluation needs no integration, no IT ticket, and no procurement.
- Run HeadwayForge alongside your current tools during transition; import their GTFS exports and retire point tools at renewal, not under deadline pressure.
- Keep scheduling, run-cutting, and dispatch systems — those are out of scope by design, and we interoperate with them.
- Everything exports (CSV, PDF, GeoJSON) with methodology notes attached — your analysis stays portable, with no lock-in.
- When you're ready to connect APC, AVL, fare, or scheduling data, the Agency plan's connectors bring it in, scoped to the workflows you choose.
Prove the thesis on your own network.
Open your agency free, then compare what you see against what your current stack costs. Plans run from $625/mo (Planner) to from $30,000/yr (Agency, invoice/PO) — or email sales@headwayforge.com to talk through a transition.