Opening the Door to Multimodal Applications: Creation, Maintenance and Application of GTFS Data

The General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) has become the de facto standard for publishing public transportation stops, routes, schedules and fares throughout the world since it was first released in 2006.Hundreds of applications read GTFS data and new opportunities for the data specification are emerging.The purpose of this report is to provide a comprehensive overview of the opportunities to use GTFS for many different types of information services for the general public as well as internal agency operations. Many opportunities exist to create new services based on GTFS data — either to provide transit information through a greater range of delivery formats (e.g., new mobile transit applications), or to provide new ways of understanding and using transit information (e.g., for planning and analysis purposes).For transit agencies that are not openly sharing their data, this report will inform decisions on prioritizing and justifying investments in open data initiatives surrounding GTFS. For transit agencies that already provide open access to their GTFS data, this report will assist the agency in maximizing their investment in GTFS data by showcasing examples of many new types of applications that utilize the same GTFS data they are already producing.For Departments of Transportation, Metropolitan Planning Organizations, and other intermodal agencies, this report will assist them in understanding the current state-of-the-art in public transportation information and will help them integrate this data, and new types of services based on this data, into their existing intelligent transportation systems (ITS) to create true multimodal traveler information systems.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AP000 Public Transportation Group.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Antrim, Aaron
  • Barbeau, Sean J
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 96th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2017-1-8 to 2017-1-12
• Date: 2017

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: References;
• Pagination: 21p
• Monograph Title: TRB 96th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Data collection; Intelligent transportation systems; Public transit; Traveler information and communication systems
• Identifier Terms: General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS)
• Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01626961
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 17-03702
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Feb 27 2017 9:27AM