Flexible Routes

[Greg]

This issue may of been raised before although I didn't notice it
anywhere so I appologize in advance for any duplications.

I recently have been tasked with placing our local transit system on
Google Transit in connection with our launch of Hastus is Jan 2009,
while most of the data can be exported from Hastus and mdofiied to
meet GTFS there are a couple flexible routes that I do not know how to
set-up for Google Transit.

A flexible route has one defined stop, a connection point to a
stanfard fixed-route bus usually at a Park and Ride or Transit Center,
the flex route will then travel anywhere within its defined service
area dropping off & picking up at any address. Becasue it does not
have a fixed route there is no way I see to program it.

My question is, can you define a route that does not contain any stops
but rather operates anywhere someone needs it to go within a certain
area, in the GIS system it is defined as a polygon and the scheduleing
software then looks if the starting address is within that area to use
that service provided the start time is within the service hours?

I hope this is clear to everyone what I am asking and how another
agency addressed this issue.

[Joe Hughes]

Hi Greg,

Right now there's no way to accurately express these sorts of flexible
services in GTFS. Concrete proposals on how to structure the values
into tables are welcome, though!

Joe

[Denis Haskin]

Reviving an even OLDER old thread (apologies for the duplication, want to make sure people who were on these discussions will see them)...

I'm going to try and give this discussion a bump: I've tried to summarize what's been discussed on this list in re: DRT/paratransit/flex needs in a new post: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/gtfs-changes/F3sbanLXeMk/mmp41LdxM8AJ

I'd certainly be interested in knowing where things stand with this discussion, and what people know about other work in this space in re: GTFS.

Thanks,

Denis