Terms of Service — Detroit Automation Academy

1. Who we are, and what these terms cover

These Terms of Service ("Terms") are an agreement between you and AutomatedTechnologies, doing business as Detroit Automation Academy ("we," "us," or the "Academy"). AutomatedTechnologies is the operator; Detroit Automation Academy is the name under which it publishes the services below.

These Terms govern your use of:

the website detroitautomationacademy.com, including every page and sub-site published on it — among them Live Transit Detroit (the live map and journey planner), The Signal, the Detroit voter guide, the data and API documentation pages, and the go.detroitautomationacademy.com short links; and
the Live Transit Detroit mobile application for iOS, when and as it is made available.

Together these are the "Services." Some Services are provided at no charge and require no account. Where a separate written agreement exists for a specific arrangement (for example, a sponsorship or a commercial data license), that agreement governs that arrangement; these Terms govern everything else.

2. Acceptance

By accessing or using any Service, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Services. You must be old enough to form a binding contract in your jurisdiction, or use the Services only with the involvement of a parent or legal guardian who accepts these Terms on your behalf. If you use the Services on behalf of an organization, you represent that you have authority to bind that organization to these Terms, and "you" includes the organization.

3. Changes to these Terms

We may revise these Terms at any time. A revision that is not material takes effect when it is posted at this address, and the "Last updated" date above shows when the current version took effect. A material revision — one that changes the fees terms in §10, the data-use rules in §6, the liability terms in §8, or §3 or §14 — takes effect 30 days after it is posted, and we will note the pending material change at this address when it is posted. Your continued use of the Services after a revision takes effect constitutes acceptance of the revised Terms. If you do not accept a revision, stop using the Services before it takes effect.

4. Intellectual property

The Services — including their software, design, text, artwork, data compilations, and structure — are owned by AutomatedTechnologies or its licensors and are protected by intellectual-property law. The names and marks Detroit Automation Academy, Live Transit Detroit, and The Signal are trademarks of AutomatedTechnologies. All rights not expressly granted in these Terms are reserved.

Agency and company names and marks (including DDOT, SMART, and QLINE) belong to their respective owners, appear here only as factual attribution, and imply no endorsement. Live Transit Detroit is an unofficial project; it is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting on behalf of DDOT, SMART, the City of Detroit, or any other agency whose data it displays.

Subject to these Terms, we grant you a limited, personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to access and use the Services through their own interfaces, for your own use. You may not copy, modify, distribute, sell, lease, or create derivative works from the Services or their content except as these Terms or a separate written agreement expressly permits.

5. Acceptable use

You may not:

interfere with, disrupt, or attempt to gain unauthorized access to the Services, their data sources, or the systems that serve them;
circumvent or attempt to circumvent any access control, rate limit, or technical measure used by the Services;
access the Services or their data by automated means except as §6 expressly licenses;
misrepresent your affiliation with us or with any transit agency, or present the Services or their data as an agency's official product;
use the Services for any unlawful purpose, or in violation of any applicable law or regulation;
remove or alter any attribution, copyright, trademark, or other proprietary notice shown with the Services or their data.

6. Transit data — provenance, permitted use, and restrictions

6.1 Where the data comes from

Schedule, route, and stop data comes from published GTFS schedule files. The street underlay is U.S. Census Bureau TIGER/Line data. Live vehicle positions and service information come from the agencies' own systems, through the following sources, as each source is in use:

DDOT vehicle positions and service bulletins: the Detroit Department of Transportation's BusTime system, operated by Clever Devices.
SMART vehicle positions: Swiftly, Inc.
QLINE vehicle positions: the QLINE's public GTFS-Realtime stream.

6.2 Viewing inside the Services

The live data displayed in the Services is provided for your personal viewing inside the Services. Ordinary use of a Service's own interface — opening the map, planning a journey, reading a stop card — is not extraction and is not restricted by this section.

6.3 The documented data files (community API)

We publish certain live-data files (currently vehicles.json, alerts.json, and smart-trip-updates.json — vehicles.json and alerts.json are the files documented on the API page of the website) for programmatic access without a key. We license you to fetch and use those files, as documented, for your own personal or internal purposes — including in software you run for yourself. That license is non-exclusive, non-transferable, and revocable, and it is conditioned on the restrictions in §6.5. Reasonable-use etiquette published on the API page (including poll intervals) is a condition of this license. We may change, limit, or end this programmatic access at any time. Commercial use of these files — including any use in a product or service offered to others — requires a separate written license from us (see §9).

SMART vehicle records are never part of the published files; SMART data is displayed inside the Services only.

6.4 The public telemetry archive

We also publish a public archive of logged historical data: snapshots of agency vehicle positions polled from the public live feeds, kept in a public repository as a historical record (the archive is described in §7 of the Privacy Policy). We license you to fetch and use the archived datasets, as documented on the API page of the website, without a key, for your own personal or internal purposes — including analysis, research, and results you derive from the data. That license is non-exclusive, non-transferable, and revocable, and it is conditioned on the restrictions in §6.5: you may not redistribute, republish, or sell the archived data itself, and you may not use it to build, supply, or operate a competing data product, data feed, or transit data service. Commercial use of the archive — including any use in a product or service offered to others — requires a separate written license from us (see §9).

SMART vehicle records are not, and will not be, included in the archive; SMART data is displayed inside the Services only.

6.5 Restrictions that apply to all live data

Whether you encounter the live data in an interface, in a published file, or in the §6.4 archive, you may not:

copy, redistribute, republish, sell, lease, share, transfer, or sublicense the live data or any feed of it, in whole or in part, to any other person or service (the §6.3 license covers your own use of the files; it is not a right to pass the data on);
use the live data to build, supply, or operate a competing data product, data feed, or transit data service;
scrape, harvest, crawl, or otherwise extract data from the Services' interfaces, or from any source other than the files §6.3 licenses, in bulk or systematically, by automated means or by hand;
interfere with the operation of the Services or of the data sources they depend on.

7. No warranty

The Services and all data they display are provided "as is" and "as available." AutomatedTechnologies and its data sources make no warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the Services or the data, including any warranty of accuracy, completeness, merchantability, or fitness for a particular purpose, and any warranty against infringement of third-party rights.

Vehicle positions, arrival estimates, and service information may be delayed, inaccurate, incomplete, or unavailable, including without any notice in the interface. Do not rely on the Services for safety-critical decisions. Published schedules and the operating agencies remain the authority for service information.

8. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, AutomatedTechnologies and its data sources are not responsible or liable for: (a) any loss of, or inaccuracy in, the data the Services display, or the cost of obtaining substitute information; or (b) any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages arising from the use of the Services or the data, including loss of revenue or profits, whether or not we were advised of the possibility of such damages.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, our total aggregate liability arising out of or relating to the Services or these Terms will not exceed the greater of (i) one hundred U.S. dollars (US $100) or (ii) the total amount you paid us for the Services in the twelve months before the claim arose.

Nothing in these Terms limits liability for bodily injury, or any liability that cannot be limited under applicable law.

9. Commercial rights reserved

All commercial exploitation of the Services and their data is reserved to AutomatedTechnologies except as a separate written agreement expressly grants it. Without limiting that reservation, we may, in our sole discretion and on terms we set: sell sponsorships and advertising; license the data, the published files, and derived data products; sell or facilitate the sale of transit passes and other fare products; and license the Services or their technology on a white-label or co-branded basis. No course of dealing, free access, or community use creates any right to any of these lanes.

Sponsorship, advertising, and other commercial arrangements are made only by separate written agreement. Rates or descriptions published on the website are invitations to discuss, not offers, and create no contract until a written agreement is signed.

10. Fees and future paid features

No Service is offered for purchase through the website or the application today, and nothing in these Terms creates a charge. We may introduce paid features, subscriptions, fare products, or other purchases in the future. If we do, the terms presented at the point of purchase (including price, taxes, and any refund terms) will apply to that purchase in addition to these Terms. A purchase under a separate written agreement is governed by that agreement.

11. Privacy

Our Privacy Policy, published on the website, describes what information the Services handle and is part of these Terms. The Services require no account. Location features in Live Transit Detroit run on your device; your location is not transmitted to us. The Services may link to or load resources from third parties (for example, fonts, and the platforms where The Signal also publishes); those third parties' own terms and privacy policies govern their services.

12. Termination

We may suspend or terminate your access to any Service, and may change, suspend, or discontinue any Service or any data source it uses, at any time and without notice or liability. You may stop using the Services at any time. Sections 4, 6.4, 6.5, 7, 8, 9, 13, 14, and 15 survive termination.

13. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless AutomatedTechnologies and its owner, personnel, and data sources from and against any claims, damages, losses, liabilities, and expenses (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising out of or relating to your use of the Services, your use of the data in violation of §6, or your violation of these Terms or of applicable law.

14. Governing law; arbitration; class-action waiver

Governing law. These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Michigan, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules.

Arbitration. Any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Services will be resolved by binding arbitration on an individual basis, administered by the American Arbitration Association under its Consumer Arbitration Rules, seated in Wayne County, Michigan. The arbitrator's award is final and may be entered as a judgment in any court of competent jurisdiction.

Class-action and jury waiver. You and we agree that any dispute will be brought only in an individual capacity: no class, collective, consolidated, or representative actions, and no jury trial. The arbitrator may not consolidate claims or preside over any representative proceeding.

Opting out of arbitration. You may opt out of this arbitration agreement and the class-action waiver by sending an email to justin@detroitautomationacademy.com within 30 days after you first use the Services — or, if you used the Services before these Terms took effect, within 30 days after the effective date above — stating your name and that you intend to opt out of arbitration. If you opt out, any dispute will be heard in a court in Wayne County, Michigan, instead of by arbitration. Opting out does not affect any other provision of these Terms.

Small-claims carve-out. Either party may bring a qualifying claim in small claims court in Wayne County, Michigan, instead of arbitration.

Equitable relief. Nothing in this section prevents either party from seeking injunctive or other equitable relief in a court of competent jurisdiction to prevent actual or threatened infringement or misuse of intellectual-property or data rights.

15. General

Severability. If any provision of these Terms is held unenforceable, it will be reformed to the minimum extent necessary to make it enforceable, or, if that is not possible, severed; the remaining provisions continue in full effect. If the class-action waiver in §14 is held unenforceable as to a claim, that claim must be brought in a court in Wayne County, Michigan, and not in arbitration.
Entire agreement. These Terms and the Privacy Policy are the entire agreement between you and us about the Services, except that a separate written agreement governs its own subject matter where one exists.
No waiver. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of it or of any other provision.
Assignment. We may assign these Terms and our rights and obligations under them, in whole or in part, at any time — including in connection with a sale, reorganization, or expansion of the business — without notice to or consent from you. You may not assign these Terms or any right under them.
Notices. Notices to us must be sent to the contact address in §16. Notices to you are given by posting within the Services or at this address.
Headings. Headings are for convenience only.

16. Contact

Questions about these Terms: justin@detroitautomationacademy.com.