For eight of 16 World Cup host locations, their bus network performance can't be seen in the global index. What does that tell us about the state of open data globally?
In the previous post in this series, we showed what the Mosaiq Global Public Transit Index (GPTI) can reveal about bus performance in World Cup host cities – King County, Seattle holding at 98.3% first-stop on-time performance (OTP) through three match days, Los Angeles quietly improving, and Atlanta showing pressure in its connecting network.
But for eight of the 16 host cities, there is no equivalent figure. Not because their buses aren't running, but because their transport data isn’t published openly. This post is about those eight cities: what we know about how they're operating, and why the gap between the visible and invisible matters. It tells an open data story that goes well beyond this tournament.
Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Miami, Boston, Guadalajara, Mexico City, and Monterrey are all hosting World Cup matches. None of their transport data appears in the GPTI. Their bus networks are moving thousands of eager fans to stadiums, but we have no independent, real-time view of how reliably they're doing it.
The reasons for not publishing open data vary: some agencies have no real-time vehicle tracking; others store data in legacy systems that don't translate easily to open standards; others face political or contractual barriers to open publishing.
Some cities don't publish open real-time public transport data at all. Others might publish only static schedule data – their timetables. But without a real-time feed showing where vehicles actually are, there's no performance to measure. A benchmarking tool like the GPTI needs both: a published schedule to compare against, and real-time vehicle data to compare with it. Without this second data stream, a network remains invisible to benchmarking.
Unfortunately, this isn't unusual. According to GTFS·X, 45% of United States (US) federally funded transport agencies don’t publish a General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) feed. The eight absent World Cup cities aren't outliers – they're part of a much wider pattern of uneven data publishing across American public transport.
Arlington, Texas – host to the Dallas Stadium (AT&T Stadium) – is the largest US city without a comprehensive public transport network. There are no standard city bus routes serving the venue. However, the county's On-Demand rideshare service was granted USD 350,000 by the Federal Transit Administration to support performance during the tournament. This is not a permanent improvement, with the fund limited to the event window. Even then, operation of the rideshare service is barred within the immediate area around the stadium.
“We don’t anticipate that (On-Demand) will be used to move people to and from the actual matches at the stadium.” – Ann Foss, Planning and Programming Manager at Dallas City.
Instead, fans are recommended to catch a train from downtown Dallas or Fort Worth to the Centreport/DFW Airport Station. From there, 125 free charter buses are available to ferry fans to the stadium and back. To cover the final stretch, they’ll need to walk for 10 minutes, with the total journey from downtown expected to take around 90 minutes.
North Texas officials say they're seeing around 6,000 fans per match day from the train. Dallas Stadium hosts nine matches, including one semifinal. A dedicated, temporary fleet is moving thousands of fans on nine match days – and none of that operation is visible to global benchmarking.
Taking a different approach, Kansas City has built an entirely new tournament-only bus system. ConnectKC26 runs 200 buses with three key offerings. These include a free airport-to-downtown service, a regional network connecting 15 destinations to the FIFA Fan Festival, and a direct stadium service.
ConnectKC26 will shuttle more than 20,000 fans to each match. But this huge operational effort is entirely invisible to the GPTI, because ConnectKC26 is a tournament-only service operating outside the scheduled network with no open real-time data feed.
Not everyone is happy about the new, temporary network. Locally, residents have organised under the "Not a Game to Us" campaign. They argue the city is prioritising transportation for one-time visitors over residents who rely on the system year-round. This concern is only amplified by the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority's plans to cut more than 25% of local weekday bus routes from September, unless counties within its service area provide additional funding. In June and July, Kansas City's public transport options will expand significantly. When the tournament ends, much of that expansion disappears with it.
Although 45% of US federally funded agencies don’t publish a visible GTFS feed, that still leaves 55% that do. The absence of Dallas and Kansas City from the GPTI isn't because Texas and Missouri aren't covered. Both locations are in the index – just not the cities that matter for this tournament.
Texas appears in the GPTI through Austin-area counties: Travis, Williamson, and Bastrop. Missouri appears through St. Louis. The data infrastructure exists at state level, but the World Cup host locations simply haven't published the open real-time feeds that would make them visible. Fortunately, that's a publishing decision that can be changed.
All three Mexican host cities – Guadalajara, Mexico City, and Monterrey – are absent from the GPTI. This is perhaps the most striking gap in the dataset.
Mexico City is one of the largest metropolises in the world, with around 25 million inhabitants. To support their daily movement needs, Mexico City has an extensive underground Metro, trolleybus fleet, and a Bus Rapid Transit system with seven lines. Its absence from the GPTI isn't a reflection of transport quality or capacity – it's a reflection of data publishing practice. The data might exist, but it isn't yet published in the open, standardised format that tools like the GPTI depend on.
For a tournament positioning itself as a global event, the absence of all three Mexican host cities from global public transport benchmarking is a missed opportunity – for the tournament, and for the broader conversation about public transport performance and accountability across Latin America.
It's worth being clear about what absence from the GPTI does and doesn't tell us. It doesn't mean these cities have poor bus networks. It doesn't mean their World Cup transport operations are failing. According to news reports, Dallas's charter fleet appears to be running smoothly. Kansas City's ConnectKC26 may be performing exceptionally. We just don't know.
What open data does for the cities that publish it is provide an independent, real-time view of how their networks are actually performing. For the eight cities absent from the GPTI, that independent view doesn't exist. When the tournament ends on 19th July, whatever operational lessons those cities generated across their match days will remain internal and unavailable to the global conversation.
For many agencies, adding a network to the GPTI starts with publishing open real-time transport data in a standard format. The technical path to doing that has become more accessible as GTFS tooling has matured – but the barriers are real, and they vary. For large, well-resourced agencies in major cities, the obstacle is more often prioritisation than capability. For smaller agencies, resource and technical constraints play a significant role. But the gap is not insurmountable.
Some cities used the tournament as a catalyst to move forward. Philadelphia made its already-published transport data more visible to passengers through real-time passenger information displays at key match-day locations. This is a different problem to the one facing Dallas or Kansas City, but it points to the same underlying dynamic: the World Cup created a moment of urgency, and some agencies used it.
For the eight cities still invisible in the GPTI, the consequences are more immediate and practical than they might appear. Agencies that don't publish open real-time data don't appear in Google Maps, Apple Maps, or any standard trip planner. For the millions of international visitors at this tournament – fans accustomed to planning journeys on their phone in cities they've never visited – that's not a minor inconvenience. It means your buses effectively don't exist until someone tells them otherwise.
Beyond the tournament, the consequences compound quietly. Agencies inside the open data ecosystem can be independently benchmarked, studied by researchers, and built upon by developers and policy advocates. Agencies outside it are excluded from that activity – simply because the data isn't there to work with. Over time, that exclusion shapes what gets measured, what gets compared, and what gets improved.
The World Cup comes around once for most hosts. The case for open data doesn't go away with it.
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