Navigator Award Finalist: Marcy Jaffe, National Rural Transit Assistance Program
Just like cities, rural and tribal communities need tech champions, too.
This is the 10th in a series of profiles on the 50 finalists for Route Fifty’s Navigator Awards program. The first 10 finalists were from the Government Allies and Cross-Sector Partners category. Finalists 11-20 were from the Agency and Department Leadership category. Finalists 21-30 were from the Executive Leadership category. Finalists 31-40 were from the Next Generation category. Finalists 41-50 were from the Data and IT Innovators category. Explore our complete list of 50 finalists.
There are plenty of passionate individuals who work in the civic tech space. The term “civic” is usually associated with cities. They are invested in their communities and are eager to engage with others to solve the multitude of challenges that cities face.
But rural and tribal communities need tech champions, too. And that’s why we’re happy to name Marcy Jaffe, a consultant who works with many rural and tribal transit agencies, as a Route Fifty Navigator Award finalist.
Jaffe, who has been working in the transportation and innovation space for two decades, has enabled many of those agencies to provide their transit data in an interactive format on trip-planning software such as Google Maps, Bing Maps, and third-party transportation apps. In particular, she helped implement a free, open-source method to produce the General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) Builder.
That’s helped organizations like the National Rural Transit Assistance Program provide expertise to those smaller agencies who may want to supply trip-planning data tools to their customers but lack the in-house expertise.
The GTFS Builder tool Jaffe built is also being used by Central Maryland Regional Transit and soon by every transit agency in the state.
According to a Navigator Award nomination submission, Jaffee “both thoroughly understands and is able to explain complex technical issues in a way that is accessible to a wide range of people, from the novice transportation enthusiast to elected officials and policymakers.”
Understanding the technological and data infrastructure is one thing. But getting other stakeholders to understand the value in those investments is another. And Jaffe’s hard work is giving smaller transit agencies the ability to innovate just like their larger peers in urban areas.
Michael Grass is executive editor of Government Executive’s Route Fifty and is based in Seattle.
NEXT STORY: Navigator Award Finalist: Michael Murphy and Team, Sangamon County Citizens’ Efficiency Committee