Tag Archives: GTFS Benefits

GTFS

Create GTFS Data Feeds with our GTFS Tool

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Getting your company’s data appearing on Google Maps, Bing Maps,  Transit Apps and other transport software is mandatory these days.  Your passengers and customers expect to be informed all the time and when you don’t meet their expectations they become disgruntled, interact negatively with your front-line staff and drag down the reputation of your company.

But for many companies getting onto such sites is a technological challenge that is beyond them or a cost that is not factored into the budgets.  AddTransit aims to make it easy and affordable to get your transport business appearing online.

So how do you do it?

Create GTFS Data Feeds - GTFS Tool

You need to create a GTFS Data Feed and the easiest way to create a GTFS data feed is with a GTFS Tool.

GTFS Data Feed

A GTFS Data Feed is a special computer file that contains data about your route, schedule and stops/stations. GTFS is an acronym for General Transit Feed Specification.  This specification was originally developed in partnership between a public transport operator and Google.  Since then the specification has become the defacto standard for all the major internet companies (e.g. Bing, Yahoo, etc.) and also for all the smartphone, mobile and cell phone public transport and transit Apps.

The GTFS Data Feed allows you provide your transit data in single feed to all these companies; a single update that becomes accessible to all your passengers, everywhere, all the time.

GTFS Tool

When you want to create GTFS data feeds, the easiest way is using a GTFS Tool.  The GTFS tool ensures that the data is in the correct format and enforces consistencies and GTFS validations.  The tool should provide an intuitive user interface, the ability to verify geographic data on maps and where possible, prevent user errors.

The GTFS tool should allow you to easily export your first schedule and make changes to your schedule, route or stops a simple maintenance function.  We also recommend an online tool, so that if the standard changes, you will automatically get the updated software.

What Next?

Well, if you’d like to get your schedule, routes, stops onto Maps.  If you’d like to make it easier for your passengers and customers to access your timetables and plan their journeys.  Or if you’d like passengers to self serve and reduce questions and queries to front line staff, then we recommend you Join AddTransit and get started.

Have a great day!

 

GTFS

Cheap GTFS (General Transit Feed Specification)

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For many companies creating and maintaining a GTFS (General Transit Feed Specification) feed can be seen as a costly exercise.  Existing processes are focussed on paper based schedules, booklets and posters and more recently on bespoke solutions for the companies website in text, PDF, graphical or even interactive formats.

The provision of a GTFS feed is seen as a new expense and it could be associated with expensive software solutions and consultants.

But, that doesn’t need to be the case.

A GTFS solution actually allows you to reduce effort and whilst getting greater coverage of potential customers.  Google’s, Apple’s and Yahoo’s maps software is now in daily use and most passengers are moving to smartphones which have a growing number of transit apps.  All these services can provide your schedules from your GTFS file.  Additionally you can include standard code on your websites that will provide interactive schedules and maps, that also use your GTFS file.

As your schedule becomes available in many more ways using the same GTFS file and common software, your paper based schedules can be reduced and your schedule software development costs reduced.

At AddTransit, we recognised the need for cheap GTFS so we make it easy to create, distribute and maintain the file.  Our focus is on providing value for money regardless of whether you are a single shuttle bus, a fleet of ferries or a large public transport system.

We want to make your GTFS experience great (and cheap), so contact us today to find out more.

Have a great day.

GTFS

GTFS Benefits – Easy for Tourists!

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One of the reasons that GTFS is great is that it makes it easier for tourists.  This is one of the “soft” passenger GTFS benefits.

Before GTFS, when tourists visited a new city, if they wanted to use public transport they would need to learn how to use the cities public transport website, app or paper based schedules.  Each cities information was displayed differently, so even if they were regular public transport users at home, they still had a learning challenge when they went somewhere new.

GTFS Benefits -Tourism: Before GTFS

After GTFS is made available for a city, it means that tourists can use their preferred journey planner (e.g. Google Maps, Rome2Rio, etc.) to see the cities local information.  Now the tourists can focus on navigating their way around the city instead of learning how to navigate their way around the website, app or paper schedules.  An additional benefit, is that a number of these GTFS journey planners are multi-lingual, meaning that now the city is far more friendly to tourists whose primary language is different to the primary language of the city.

GTFS Benefits - Tourism- After GTFS

Of course, some may say that it makes cities less unique, however GTFS gives smaller cities the ability to present themselves in a way that their budget would never normally stretch to, and less face it.. not many people travel with the aim of experiencing/coming to grips with a cities public transport website/app.

So in summary, one of the GTFS benefits is that it’s a great way for making your city friendlier for tourists.  And for tourists, the benefit is they now can explore so many more places with a sense of confidence that they will get where they want to go, knowing when they have to leave and when they will arrive.

Happy travelling!