Is it good practice to re-use Calendars/Calendar Dates across multiple trips/routes?

[Carl Partridge]

I am new to GTFS and currently converting some transit data into GTFS format.  It is in a pretty standard format such as:

ROUTE 01

Trip starting at 2pm  (runs Monday - Friday, not xmas day)

Trip starting at 4pm  (runs Monday - Friday, not xmas day)

ROUTE 02

Trip starting at 2.10pm (runs Monday - Friday, not xmas day)

Trip starting at 2.20pm (runs Monday - Friday, not xmas day)

My question is, how many entries should there be in the 'Calendars' and 'Calendar_Dates' tables for the above example?

At the moment, I'm creating a whole new 'Service' (Calendar/Calendar Dates) for each trip, so there would be 4 entries in each table for the above example.  But since all the run days/run dates are the same, I could theoretically map all of the trips above to just one service.

So, should there be:

- 1 'service' per route?

- 1 'service' per trip?

or

- As small a number of services as possible for each unique combination of calendar days and calendar dates?

Clearly the third option would reduce file size but equally feels a little unintuitive.

Grateful for help and advice on this one.

Carl

______________________

Carl Partridge

FatAttitude Ltd

[Brian Ferris]

Most agencies actually go with the third option.

Carl Partridge

FatAttitude Ltd

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "GoogleTransitDataFeed" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to googletransitdat...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to googletran...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/googletransitdatafeed?hl=en.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.