GTFS For the Rest of Us

[Ross Peterson]

I was suprized to learn about this on LinkedIn, so I thought I'd check here to see if I missed something. It appears I did not, so this may be news to some of you as well. There's a group meeting in D.C. in november to discuss some of the same things this group was originally planning to address... maybe some face-to-face time will stimulate the discussion.

http://www.gtfsfortherestofus.net/

[Becker, Jeff]

On Tuesday, October 1, 2013 9:46:45 AM UTC-6, Ross Peterson wrote:

I was suprized to learn about this on LinkedIn, so I thought I'd check here to see if I missed something. It appears I did not, so this may be news to some of you as well. There's a group meeting in D.C. in november to discuss some of the same things this group was originally planning to address... maybe some face-to-face time will stimulate the discussion.

http://www.gtfsfortherestofus.net/

The group is news to me; however, I reviewed a paper submitted by 3 of the listed participants for the TRB 2014 Annual Meeting.  It describes collecting data using mobile devices with GPS and some apps on the matatu system in Nairobi, then coding into a GTFS format, and then producing some route and stop visualization.  The matatu system is more jitney-like than DRT.  The paper is interesting, but showed that the authors started with transport in developing countries, so I'm not sure how this fits in with we have contemplated thus far; I think we do want to include very flexible jitneys, though.

[Roger Teal]

On Tuesday, October 1, 2013 10:46:45 AM UTC-5, Ross Peterson wrote:

I was suprized to learn about this on LinkedIn, so I thought I'd check here to see if I missed something. It appears I did not, so this may be news to some of you as well. There's a group meeting in D.C. in november to discuss some of the same things this group was originally planning to address... maybe some face-to-face time will stimulate the discussion.

http://www.gtfsfortherestofus.net/

Looking at the web site that Ross is referencing, it appears that they have not been in communication with Google about his conference. Jeff Becker indicated both here and in a phone conversation today that the organizers of the conference, who seem to be the MIT group, are relatively new to flexible transit and will probably benefit from participation by folks such as in this group who are knowledgeable and experienced about it, and the GTFS spec and process. This is also something FTA should be aware of, but probably is not.

 

What do the others in this group think would be a useful approach in this situation? Should we directly communicate with the MIT group, whose experience researching the jitney services in Nairobi is apparently the inspiration for this workshop? The World Bank has done work in Africa on "informal" transit, and perhaps even in Kenya (although I am only aware of the work they have sponsored in West Africa, such as Ghana), which may be how they became involved in this. I have spoken to some folks there in recent years about this, but my focus was somewhat different.

 

Most importantly, since I don't see Google on the list of participants, I wonder how useful this will be without the guidance of those who are very familiar with the GTFS process and Google's objectives in this area. Brian Ferris has his own ideas about the flexible transit standard, so it would seem essential for these folks to have some communication with him prior to their workshop or to have him present in person or virtually.

 

What are the thought of others about this? Is anyone in this group in a position to attend this meeting on Nov. 12? How can this workshop contribute to movement towards a spec for flexible transit as part of GTFS?

[Brian Ferris]

I plan on attending the workshop.

You might also consider subscribing to https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/making-gtfs-work-for-the-rest-of-the-world for more info on the group.

That said, I haven't heard much action from the gtfs-flexible-wg since the initial flurry of action in May.  I know that some of you have been working on proposals.  Anything concrete ready to share?  I'd love to try to bridge the gap between flexible and ad-hoc transit systems (since I think there might be some common modeling ideas).

Thanks,

Brian

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[Kevin Chambers]

Thanks Ross for posting the news here.  I reached out to Emily Eros at MIT and asked about remote participation. Here is her response:

 

Thanks for the response, and glad to hear you're interested. You're right - it is a haul from the west coast. We're planning on live-streaming the event, but I can certainly look into two-way communication options. I'll let you know as soon as I find out!

 

So if you are interested in engaging remotely, consider shooting her an email at eje...@mit.edu.

 

This seems like a very valuable opportunity, so I'm sad that it's unlikely I'll be attend in person. I'm wondering to what degree folks can build on the momentum of this event at TransportionCamp DC in January? I am planning to attend that, and perhaps the TRB annual meeting as well.

 

Cheers,

KC

 

Kevin Chambers

IT Director

Ride Connection

503.528.1747

www.rideconnection.org

 

"To link accessible, responsive transportation with community needs" 

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[Roger Teal]

You may have seen that Brian Ferris of Google is planning to be there, and I am within 24 hours of making an airline reservation so I can attend, as it is relatively cheap at this very moment to fly to DC and back for a one day trip. Maybe some of our East Coast colleagues can also make their way to DC for this workshop. Glad you are getting them to explore 2-way remote participation, no reason this can’t be possible with a reasonable audience size.

 

Roger

[Kevin Chambers]

I will be attending also. I don't know to what degree there's interest in talking about the transactional side of things (moving specific trip data from system to system), but if there is, I'd be happy to talk about Ride Connection's clearinghouse project.

[Kevin Webb]

Kevin, 

I missed this email -- got lost in my "lists" folder. However, glad to hear that you're coming!

While I'm not super involved in organizing the conference I have had a chance to talk with folks about the agenda and scope for the discussion. A couple point of clarification, as I currently understand:

1) We're going to try and stay focused on service discovery using static data, primarily for fixed/flexible route services.  I think there will be overlap with the dynamic dispatch issues you all are grappling with, however, we're going to examine approaches that are useful without real-time data. Two reasons for this: first, many of the stakeholders participating in the meeting will be interested in this topic from the perspective of developing cities. There are a lot of low hanging fruit in solving discovery problems in areas where we just need less precise static fixed-route info. Second, the real-time component complicates things significantly both in terms of the data standard and the technical barriers for implementation. 

This means that the dynamic availability information, and transactional data (reservations, etc.) probably aren't in scope for the conversation. That said, I know there are other folks from the US working on dynamic dispatch problems that will be attending so it may be a good place to connect on the more US-specific implementation details for ride-share/dispatch applications. 

Regardless of where we end up with regard to these details, I still think that that there's a lot of value in connecting the service discovery conversations happening here and abroad. 

2) If you don't mind sending out a quick introduction email on the "Making GTFS work..." list that would be great. My hope was that everyone involved could introduce themselves and the problems they're grappling with ahead of the conference. Time will be short in DC so the more we can share ahead the better prepared will be!

Thanks again and see you soon!

Kevin

 

-----------------------------------

Kevin Webb

p: +1.202.480.9322

e: kw...@conveyal.com

[Kevin Chambers]

Hey Kevin--

 

Thanks for the thorough reply, that all makes perfect sense to me.

 

Great idea to have folks post a brief introduction on the list so that birds of a feather can find one another. I'll do that.

 

Kevin Chambers

IT Director

Ride Connection

503.528.1747

www.rideconnection.org

 

"To link accessible, responsive transportation with community needs" 

 

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[Aaron Antrim]

Hi all -- 

I will also be at Tuesday's workshop, and sent a message out to the "Making GTFS Work for the Rest of the World" list to introduce myself.

Most of my clients are U.S.-based, but more recently, I have been supporting a project to create and use GTFS data in China.  Part of the project is to help transit agencies describe their services in the existing Specification, and also to determine how the Spec could be improved to describe the services more accurately.  Immediately, the GTFS data will be used to generate indicators for assessing and benchmarking transit service.  Eventually, it is possible this would be used for passenger-facing information systems, too.  I will be one of the panelists in a morning session on this project.

One of the primary purposes of the workshop is to discuss international applications.  There is much opportunity for U.S.- and internationally-focused practitioners to work together and draw lessons from each other.  This workshop is a great venue for that lesson sharing.  But I urge that those of us (like me) with mostly U.S.-based experience should be careful not to overwhelm the workshop with our interests in paratransit and human service transportation problems that are unique to the U.S.  Depending on the goals of U.S.-focused practitioners who are participating, it may be useful to carve out a time and space just for topics that are mainly of interest in the U.S.

To my knowledge, this is the first meeting where people from all over the world for the express purpose of discussing and potentially extending the GTFS.  Looking forward to it…

-- 

Aaron Antrim

www.trilliumtransit.com

Portland, Oregon