ctaa 2016 portland - aaron antrim - gtfs - what is it? why does it matter?
TRANSCRIPT
GTFS What is it?Why does it matter?
Aaron Antrim | CTAA 2016 | Portland | May 2016
Let’s take a trip…
step 2(my house)
step 1(destination)
step 3(transfer point)
step 7(origination)
step 4(destination timing point)
step 5(transfer timing point)
step 6(transfer timing point)
Almost half of participants were unable to correctly identify bus times using standard timetables and maps.
Design Elements of Effective Transit Information Materials (2004), National Center for Transit Research at the University of South Florida(http://www.nctr.usf.edu/pdf/527-12.pdf)
Result of Florida study
Agency
Region Portland,OregonHumboldt County,
CaliforniaAnnual budget ~$500 million ~$5 million
IT staff ~50 0
A story of two agencies
Why isn’t it as easy to get transit directions as driving directions?
Bibiana McHugh,IT Manager for GIS and Location-Based Services in 2005
pre-2005
Hello, Google.
2005
Google Transit launches as a “Labs” product. TriMet, in Portland, is the only agency in the trip planner for over 6 months.
2005
January: Humboldt Transit Authority receives grant to update local transit agency websites. I submit a proposal that includes Google Transit.
August: Google Transit launches for Humboldt County.
2005 2006 2007
At launch, Humboldt County is one of 17 areas in North America with Google Transit.
Transit in Google Maps Today
• Transit directions on 6 continents for ~7,000 cities in Google Maps
• 1 million transit stops
Fromhttps://www.google.com/about/company/
Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.
GTFS!Lightweight format describes:
StopsRoutes
SchedulesFares
General Transit Feed Specification
What is GTFS?●TransitWiki provides an approachable
and complete background on GTFS. http://bit.ly/transit-wiki-gtfs
●GTFS datasets consist of multiple spreadsheet-like files, in a comma-separated values (CSV) format
GTFS-realtimeCompanion specification includes:• vehicle positions• real-time arrival estimates• schedule changes• advisories
2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
What is Real-time information?
Vehicle Positions
Real-time arrival estimates (trip updates)
Service alertsRoute 5 is experiencing
significant delays due to flooded roads
“We’re small and we can’t provide every customized solution people ask for…. making the data available is something that we’re very familiar with so that developers can develop the tools themselves. It’s like having an army of developers available to us.”
Tim McHugh, CIO, Trimetfull interview at tinyurl.com/trimet-cto
GTFS Today
and 100s of other applications
data
GTFS
data
GTFS
Roads
Elevation
opentripplanner.orgOpen-source multi-modal trip planner
1-ClickOpen-source trip planner
for specialized transportation
data
GTFSTrails
Open-source software to create HTML timetables that meet accessibility requirements: https://github.com/brendannee/gtfs-to-html
GTFS-to-HTML
Walkscore.comProvides transit score and apartment search
dataGTFS
Businesses
RoadsApartment
s
data
GTFS
GTFS applications directory
http://bit.ly/gtfs-consuming-applications
More at transitwiki.org
