June 2024 - Advancing GTFS: New Contributors, Proposals, and Discussions

[eliasmbd]

The GTFS Digest is a resource generated monthly by MobilityData providing an overview of developments on GTFS.

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🏅 Contributor Shoutouts

Emily Chwiggy & Mustafa Kemal Sürmeneli

Posted their first issues (471 & 478) on google/transit! Thank you for your valuable contributions and welcome to the GTFS community.

Rihal Rehzal

Shoutout for posting your FIRST EVER GitHub issue and for contributing on slack! GitHub can be a daunting place for newcomers and you handled it like a champ. Welcome!

Biju Nair & Daniel Mihalov

Thank you for sharing your contributions (1, 2,& 3) on the GTFS slack. It is inquiries like yours that have dramatically increased community engagement on the platform.

📂 Active Proposals

Add that shapes should be included #470

This change adds a “should” statement in shapes.txt to specify that shapes.txt should be included for all route-based services, instead of making it recommended in all cases since zone-based demand-responsive services can now be modeled in GTFS.

Change stops.txt presence because of demand responsive services #472

This PR proposes to update the presence of stops.txt after the adoption of flex, changing it from Required to Conditionally Required (required if locations.geojson doesn't exist, optional otherwise).

Clarify intended use for timepoint in stop_times.txt #474

This change clarifies the empty semantics for stop_times.timepoint, specifying that an empty value means no timepoint values are provided for any record in stop_times.txt, and if provided, all records that have times associated should have timepoint values of 0 or 1.

Add validity rules for polygons in locations.geojson #476

This PR proposes to refer to the OpenGIS Simple Features Specification, section 6.1.11 to improve the validity rules for flex polygons, instead of describing all the ways in which polygons can be invalid in GTFS.

Other open proposals:

• [GTFS-Fares v2] Add fare_leg_join_rules.txt (first iteration) #439
• Add Feed Version and GTFS url to the GTFS real time FeedHeader #434
• [GTFS-Fares v2] Fare product/media transfer behavior #423

🔥 Most Active Conversations

Best practice for the use of shapes #477

Stefan from Bliksem Labs B.V. proposes to add a new file that could be used to determine the properties of a shape, including specifying if a shape is specific or abstracted, and is shared between unrelated stop sequences. The practice of creating shape points at every stop point is also proposed here.

Center coordinate or Bounding box definition in feed_info.txt #471

Mustafa from Mathematician suggested adding fields in feed_info.txt that indicate a center point to focus on the area it represents on the map.

Proposal: Add elevator/escalator real-time status - extend EntitySelector to select pathways instead of only nodes #268

Sebastian from wheelmap.org suggested extending EntitySelector so that RT feeds can select a pathway to communicate its realtime status, allowing GTFS to flag elevator or escalator outages in Realtime. This conversation was recently reignited by Cody from SimplifyTransit.

Global trip id #462

David from SKI+ proposes a new field "trip_global_id" in GTFS Schedule and Realtime for better integration with other standards like NeTEx and HRDF, addressing a need for a day-long valid trip identifier. This global ID would allow easier mapping of travel information across different data formats.

Addition of vehicles.txt to GTFS static #458

Darwin from TransSee proposes adding a vehicles.txt file to GTFS. This could provide detailed information about vehicle capacity, accessibility, and features, enhancing real-time prediction tools and standardizing fleet data reporting. This file could include details such as vehicle type, capacity, manufacturer, and accessibility features.

Slack conversations on #gtfs

gcamp asks: Is anyone using boarding areas (stop with location_type=4)? Does it serves any purpose for anyone?

Slack conversations on #gtfs-realtime

Biju Nair comments: We are looking to understand how we can handle partial trip cancellations via GTFS-RT.

Slack conversations on #gtfs-flex

Leo announces: the free Spare GTFS-Flex Builder, is now officially launched.

Marcy asks: Is there any cost to a transit agency or tribal transit to have TransitApp publish their GTFS-Flex?

Leo asks: Does somebody know what's FTA position regarding GTFS-Flex? Are they requiring it as part of GTFS for reporting purpose?

Weston asks: Hello! I’m wondering if anyone knows of any hardware vendors that are ingesting/looking into ingesting GTFS-Flex?

Leonard states: Flex sometimes contains self-intersecting polygons which cause some problems when processing.

Daniel shares: I am having an issue where Charlevoix County Medical Trips is appearing as an available service for a trip that starts and ends within Charlevoix County.

Daniel asks: Is the shape_dist_travelled field required in order for the trip to be registered by OTP?

📅 Upcoming Events

GTFS-Fares v2 – Monthly meetings | July 30, 2024 @ 11 am EDT

Topics : GTFS-Fares v2 extension Working Group Meeting

Governance Working Group Meeting | July 11, 2024 @ 11 am EDT

Topics : Next steps in the GTFS governance Revamp

💬 Join the GTFS Community

GitHub: google/transit: Share your ideas with the community! Join the official GTFS GitHub repository.

GTFS-changes: Get updates as soon as they happen, join the GTFS-changes google groups to get information about new pull requests and votes.

GTFS-realtime: Talk everything Realtime and stay up to date. This group is discussing the GTFS Realtime, asking questions, and proposing changes.

GTFS.org: The official GTFS documentation website. Here you will find frequently updated resources for your GTFS needs.

MobilityData Slack: Have a question about GTFS or need to connect with the community? Join in on GTFS slack conversations. This is a great place to have questions answered quickly by the over 1,300 mobility enthusiasts navigating our channels.

Thank you for reading the seventh edition of the GTFS Digest! We look forward to bringing you the latest GTFS updates in 2024 and beyond.