General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) Static

The GTFS protocol can be implemented in two ways, using static data or real-time. Static GTFS presents the planned schedule for a given period (such as the timeline for the next six months), while real-time GTFS is used to make last hour based on real-world conditions (such as traffic, meteorological conditions).

The static GTFS protocol is structured into a series of CSV (Comma Separated Values) files that contain information such as routes and journeys. These files are compressed into a ZIP file to be made available in urban mobility applications.

The next figure shows how is the relationships between GTFS files based on the Framework GeoFrame.

Four open source projects were found  for insertion and modification of static GTFS data, the next table shows the projects:

Name	Language	Usability	Table Header	Link
SimpleGTFSCreator	Python	Bad	A Python library that contains scripts that helps create GTFS schedules through Geographic Information System (GIS) file with public transportation information.	https://github.com/PatSunter/ SimpleGTFSCreator
OpenTransitTools / gtfsdb	Python	Bad	The focus of the GTFSDB project is to make GTFS data available to software developers in a database.	https://github.com/OpenTran sitTools/gtfsdb
Google / transitfeed	Python	Partially Meets	A Python library for reading, validating and writing traffic itinerary in GTFS format.	https://github.com/google/tra nsitfeed
Conveyal / gtfseditor	Java	Good	A web framework for editing static GTFS data.	https://github.com/conveyal/ gtfs-editor/

Following are the descriptions about the systems:

• SimpleGTFSCreator is a project that contains a series of functions in Python that assists the structuring of the static GTFS protocol, however this project has as input only GIS file type;
• OpenTransitTools / gtfsdb is a project that aims to import ZIP file of the static GTFS protocol into a database;
• Google / transit feed is the official Google project that assists dynamic file validation of the GTFS protocol, in addition the system generates HTML pages with the itinerary from the ZIP file;
• Conveyal / gtfs-editor is a web editor that assists in structuring static GTFS protocol through maps and forms. The Conveyal / gtfs-editor database is MapDB which provides a set of features for map development with disk storage functionality.

In the next post I will talk about Conveyal / gtfs-editor.