An Open Platform for Transit Agencies to Improve the Quality of Their Real-Time Data

Real-time transit data has been shown to have many benefits and is, in comparison with many other potential operational or capital improvements to bus or rail service, an affordable means of increasing ridership.

The TRB IDEA (Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis) Program's Transit IDEA Final Report 93: An Open Platform for Transit Agencies to Improve the Quality of Their Real-Time Data details a prototype platform that makes General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) Realtime validation tools readily available to, potentially, all transit agencies in North America.

GTFS Realtime feeds rarely get direct attention via manual or automated means to ensure their contents meet the data specification, are internally consistent, and will not cause issues for “downstream” consuming applications. This project has found clear benefits to the full, cloud-based GTFS Realtime validation platform. Agency staff who participated in testing the platform reported they currently have no equivalent means to inspect or test their realtime data feeds.