Updates to the Real-Time Bus Feed
Josh from MassDOT
Developers:
I hope all is well! We have a few exciting announcements planned for the coming months . In the meantime, we wanted to reach out to you about some changes coming to the MBTA real-time bus XML feed February 28th.
Our software partner NextBus has rolled out a number of additions to the feed that will help you provide your customers with more detailed information on what predictions mean. These new fields are especially valuable in light of some of the minor issues we have seen with predictions during the rough weather this winter.
Most of the changes made to the feed are additions and should not break your apps. That said, we wanted to give all of you a chance to test your applications against the new feed before these changes move to the production feed on February 28th.
The new feed can be accessed using the server test.nextbus.com and the agency string mbta-test, as in the following link:
http://test.nextbus.com/service/publicXMLFeed?command=routeList&a=mbta-test
Look for the following new features:
· New attribute affectedByLayover in predictions. A layover is the time scheduled between the end of a trip and the start of the next trip for that bus, and is built into the schedule so that if a bus is a couple minutes late ending one trip it can still start the next one on time. If a prediction is affectedByLayover (“true”) it means the bus hasn’t started that trip yet, and the prediction assumes that nothing will delay the driver during the layover. (If a bus is going to be too late to its layover to be able to start the next trip on time, the prediction does account for that. If affectedByLayover the value is still a prediction, just one dependant on an additional factor.)
· New attribute “delayed” in predictions. If a prediction is delayed the bus is stuck in traffic or weather and the prediction may not be accurate then “delayed” will be “true”.
· New attribute tripTag in predictions. tripTag is a unique identifier for the scheduled trip. It is the same identifier that can be found in the GTFS trip_id field.
· New command allVehicleLocations returns the location of every active vehicle in the system.
Please reply to this message or email me directly with any questions about the changes.
Best,
____________________________________
Joshua K. Robin
Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority