July 2024 - Stay Informed: 3 New Adoptions and a Vote to Watch

[GTFS Digest]

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

 
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🏅 Contributor Shoutouts

Stefan de Konink
Shoutout for handling the conversation on #481 like a champ. It’s not easy to juggle different viewpoints when proposing changes.

Muhammed Yaseen & Amal
Thank you for joining the GTFS community on Slack and asking valuable questions on resources that can help everyone.

Steve White & Jonathan McHatton
Thank you for contributing on #gtfs-realtime. We are sure that the community will get back to you in no time and help you out in your inquiries.

Matt Caywood
Your contribution on #gtfs-flex has not gone unnoticed! We are sure that you are not the only one asking this question. 

🚀 Recently Adopted

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.

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.

Update requirement for feed_info.txt #460
This PR updates the presence description for feed_info.txt, to better align with the specification formatting and provide additional clarity on the requirement of the file, making it Conditionally Required.

🗳️ Currently Voting

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).

📂 Active Proposals

Add that headsigns are recommended #485
This PR proposes to add a statement that headsigns is recommended for all services with headsign text displayed on the vehicle which may be used to distinguish amongst trips in a route.

[GTFS Fares v2] Area Set matching predicates #483
In the current fare_leg_rules.txt, only origin and destination areas can be used as predicates, which cannot effectively describe some more complex zonal fare structures. This PR suggests adding collections of stop areas or “area sets” as predicates.

Clarification of CANCELED/SKIPPED TripUpdates VS NO_SERVICE Alerts #482
This PR proposes to clarify If an Alert with Effect.NO_SERVICE exists and conflicts with values in TripUpdates, Alerts should be considered the source of truth.

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

Scheduled reinforcement trips #481
Stefan addresses the need for GTFS to support scheduled reinforcement trips that only become available in travel information services once confirmed by the operator, proposing an additional column in `trips.txt` to mark these trips, and discusses the limitations and potential solutions within existing GTFS and GTFS-RT frameworks.

Make headsigns a recommended GTFS field #480
This issue continues the discussion from #461 about the optional GTFS fields, proposing that the `trip_headsign` field should be recommended due to its widespread use and utility in production data, while considering potential challenges for routes without headsigns and exploring solutions such as a new `has_headsign` field to indicate the presence or absence of headsigns.

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.

Slack conversations on #gtfs

Muhammed Yaseen asks: Is there any open source tools available for viewing/ visualizing the gtfs data?

Amal needs your help to display taxi data on their GTFS.

James Bunch asks: Does anyone have a utility or process to add the shape_dist_traveled  field to the shapes.txt, and then to the Stop_times.txt files in a GTFS feed?


Slack conversations on #gtfs-realtime

Connor Riley asks: What is the best practice for taking those and generating vehicle and trip updates? Are there open source libraries for doing this? Are there any papers I should read? Also, do such systems typically require any manual input or additional data?

Steve White inquires about stop time updates: Do consumers also carry forward EARLY predicted arrivals to future stops? Or carry them forward until you get to a timepoint, and then assume the bus will hold to be back on time?


Slack conversations on #gtfs-flex

Matt Caywood asks: Hi, what is the “canonical” way to identify if a GTFS feed contains GTFS-flex elements?

📅 Upcoming Events

Governance Working Group Meeting | August 8, 2024 @ 11 am EDT
Topics : Final steps in the GTFS governance Revamp before proposal writting

GTFS-Fares v2 – Monthly meetings | August 27, 2024 @ 11 am EDT
Topics : GTFS-Fares v2 extension Working Group Meeting

💬 Join the GTFS Community

GitHub: google/transit

Share your ideas with the community! Join the official GTFS GitHub repository.

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GTFS.org

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Thank you for being a part of the eight edition of the GTFS Digest! We appreciate your continued support!