Removal of provider-specific bicycle rental updaters

[Leonard Ehrenfried]

Hi *,

OTP contains bike rental updaters (API integrations) for a number of providers that predate the existence of GBFS.

At the last OTP2 developer meeting the present developers where wondering if there are any users of these updaters or if our gut feeling is correct and the industry has moved onto GBFS in its entirety.

The providers in question are:

BCycleBikeRentalDataSource.java

BicimadBikeRentalDataSource.java

BikeRentalDataSourceFactory.java

BixiBikeRentalDataSource.java

CitiBikeNycBikeRentalDataSource.java

CityBikesBikeRentalDataSource.java

JCDecauxBikeRentalDataSource.java

KeolisRennesBikeRentalDataSource.java

NextBikeRentalDataSource.java

OVFietsKMLDataSource.java

SanFranciscoBayAreaBikeRentalDataSource.java

ShareBikeRentalDataSource.java

SmooveBikeRentalDataSource.java

UIPBikeRentalDataSource.java

VCubDataSource.java

Our intention is to remove these updaters at the next 2.1 release.

If you however are an active user of these and are interested in maintaining the files, please answer in this thread.

Many thanks

--

  Leonard Ehrenfried

  https://leonard.io

[Joel Lappalainen]

Hi,

At least in Finland, we do still use provider specific updaters. I'm not at least aware that they would also have GBFS format data available. Out of those listed updaters, SmooveBikeRentalDataSource is one of the updaters we use. However, I think the upstream version of it is slightly outdated. Additionally, we have other provider specific updaters that don't exist in the upstream code. I don't know GBFS well enough to know if there could be some fields present in provider specific updaters that are not covered by GBFS. My concern is that if we need to change the bike rental station data model/routing based on some information that cannot be modeled through GBFS, it would be difficult to include those changes to upstream.

--

Joel Lappalainen

[Evan Siroky]

We at IBI Group exclusively use GBFS. So long as others are in favor, we are in favor of removing these updaters. All of them including the SmooveBikeRentalDataSource are differentiated only by their different naming conventions for the same items (docks available, bikes available), so the GBFS will have more information (especially v2.1+). Speaking for my part of the world, I am pretty sure the SanFranciscoBayAreaBikeRentalDataSource is no longer applicable because the operator of the latest iteration of that service publishes GBFS now.

Evan

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[sven...@gmail.com]

Hi,

We at Moop Mobility are also in favor of removing this updaters. GBFS is the defacto standard and should be encouraged, if there are still operators that don't support GBFS and are not willing to support GBFS it's in our opinion better to build a seperate converter from the specfic standard to GBFS then to build in all the converters into OTP.

Sven

Op vrijdag 14 mei 2021 om 18:17:11 UTC+2 schreef evan....@gmail.com:

[t2g...@gmail.com]

I am in favor of removing all of the updaters mentioned above. Then anyone who want to add back an updater may do so as a Sandbox module taking the responsibility of maintaining it - and giving the community someone to contact if needed. @Joel if you want , then I can make a PR to move the SmooveBikeRentalDataSource to a Sandbox module as an example and assign HSL as the "owner". 

Note! A Sandbox module have one or more owners who decide what to do with the module.

Thomas

[Joel Lappalainen]

Ok making it a sandbox feature is fine for me. If you already know how to do it and don't have to spend too much time on it, you can go ahead and do it. We probably need to update the updater slightly at some point during this migration process but I'm not quite sure yet when it will happen.

-Joel