Problems with Trapeze GTF Export Tool

[Tim]

Bibiana McHugh from TriMet suggested I post this question to the
group. I'm working with MATA, the local transit agency in Memphis TN,
to publish their GTF. They are currently using Trapeze for their
scheduling needs and we used the Trapeze export tool to create the
GTF. I ran the feed validation tool and received 612 errors and 410
warnings. It may be a case of garbage in garbage out or something to
do with the export tool. Has anybody else had similar problems using
the Trapeze export tool? If so, how did you work around the problems
to get a decent feed.

On a side note I opened the feed in the schedule viewer and couldn't
make heads nor tails out of what I saw. I've read the wiki on the open
source tool but could really use a good tutorial or walk though guide.
Any ideas?

[Joachim Pfeiffer]

Hi Tim,
From what I have seen first hand and heard from others, the sheer amount of error message and warnings can be a bit intimidating at first. The feedvalidator does not summarize systematic errors, so you will have to work your way through it and analyze the error log. Hundreds or even thousands of individual messages often go back to just a few systematic root causes.
Example: The feed files are not compliant with the latest revision of the GTFS. With TransXChange2GoogleTransit I had a case the other day where stop times at the first stops of trips were missing the now required arrival time, and conversely, the stop times at the last stops of trips did not have the now required departure time. This one root cause resulted in thousands of error messages, which of course all vanished after a program change to comply with the current revision of the GTFS.
JP

[Joe Hughes]

Hi Tim,

Without seeing the errors & feed in question, it's difficult to tell
whether the issues are coming from the export or the source data. I
do know that Trapeze is working on improvements to their exporter for
an upcoming release. Joachim is also correct that the feed validator
tool doesn't group together most repeated issues, so one or two
changes to the export can often fix a large number of issues at once.

Joachim, according to the historical information at on the open-source
wiki ( http://code.google.com/p/googletransitdatafeed/wiki/FeedSpecHistory
), the arrival time has been required since the first version of GTFS.
(The GTFS group takes great pains to avoid incompatible changes when
improving the format.)

Joe