Draft GTFS Changes proposals discussed at GTFS for the Rest of Us event in Washington DC on 12/11/13

[tay...@itpworld.net]

Hi All

It was great to see so many people in Washington DC on Tues 12th November at the GTFS for the Rest of Us event, and many thanks to all involved at MIT, Columbia University, World Bank and Rockefeller Foundation for kindly supporting and hosting the event -- as well as the many people who openly contributed their time and knowledge on the day -- which is a great basis for on-going collaboration.

At the end of the day's sessions a group of us got together to discuss a couple of small changes to the existing GTFS spec which, although minor, are likely to make it much easier for people working to create and maintain GTFS feeds in cities with non-structured transit services and vehicle types that are not currently supported.  HERE'S A LINK to a Google Doc laying out the two draft proposals we all created on the day, and many thanks to Brian Ferris for expertly facilitating this technical discussion and tidying up my notes into a formal proposal.

If anyone subscribed to this group has any comments on these proposals, then please go ahead and make them within this discussion thread so that we can refine them through further online dialogue (as required).  In the interest of maintaining the momentum we established at the event, I'm suggesting we aim to have wrapped up this discussion by close of play on Weds 20th November.  At this point I will kick these two proposals over to separate discussion topics on the GTFS Changes group for wider comment and discussion.  At this point it will be appropriate for all of us to demonstrate our support for the proposals by commenting (even just saying +1) to ensure these valuable changes get accepted and adopted by the wider community.  Key to this is demonstrating how we can create and consume the proposed changes in our GTFS feeds, and our commitment to start doing so ASAP.

I'll provide more detail on those final points once the proposals are out there on GTFS Changes, but for now please send through any comments you have on the proposals.

Cheers

Neil

[Brian Ferris]

Just to add to Neil's comment's, +1s on the proposal are certainly appreciated but updating your feeds to use the new specification features will help the proposals even more.

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[tay...@itpworld.net]

Great point Brian - as always, adoption of the proposed changes is the yardstick by which we need to judge the effectiveness of these proposed changes (and others in future).

Slightly later than planned, I am just about to punt the proposed changes out to the wider GTFS Changes group as 2 separate proposals - thanks to all who contributed to the discussion in the Google Doc.  I have responded to most of the comments with my views, but please feel free to add more to the discussion in the document.

It would be great to get the simple draft proposals accepted by Christmas with a demonstration feed (I'm sure we can do something with the teams in Mexico City and Metro Manila if they are interested) to show how the proposals can be adopted in cities with non-stop-based routes and alternative vehicle types.

[Peter Waiganjo Wagacha]

Hi Neil and Brian,

We plan to have the "spruced up" Nairobi GTFS feed by Christmas, hopefully alongside Mexico city and Manila.

best regards,

peter

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