![\"Split](\"https:\/\/addtransit.com\/webroot\/images\/blog\/when-a-sailing-gets-cancelled-hero.png\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
A storm rolls in and you cancel the 2pm sailing. You post it on Facebook. You update the notice board at the terminal. But the family already driving there is looking at Google Maps, which still shows the 2pm departure running on time \u2014 because your website and Google Maps have never talked to each other.<\/p>\n
That gap, between “we cancelled it” and “the passenger found out,” is where ferry operators lose trust and take the angry phone calls.<\/p>\n
Static GTFS<\/strong> is your timetable, published as a feed. It’s what puts your sailings into Google Maps, Apple Maps and other journey planners in the first place \u2014 someone searches “ferry to [island]” and your times show up. It’s set up once and updated when your schedule changes.<\/p>\n GTFS-Realtime<\/strong> is the live layer on top: “this specific sailing is delayed,” “this one’s cancelled,” “the vessel is here right now.” It updates continuously, and it’s the part almost no ferry-booking platform produces \u2014 which is exactly the part that matters most for a ferry operator.<\/p>\n Ferries are weather-exposed in a way scheduled bus routes usually aren’t. Cancellations and delays are routine across a season, not a rare exception. And a cancelled sailing strands people who are often already at the terminal, having driven there \u2014 the cost of stale information is higher than a bus you just catch ten minutes later. Add in seasonal or tidal schedule changes, and you’ve got exactly the conditions where a live feed earns its keep.<\/p>\n For a ferry operator, GTFS-Realtime isn’t telemetry for its own sake \u2014 it’s cancellation communication that reaches the passenger where they’re already looking, the map, without spending anything extra on ads or SMS to do it.<\/p>\n Sure \u2014 and that reaches people who already follow you, or think to go check. It doesn’t reach the passenger who searched once, weeks ago, and is now mid-journey with the map open. That’s a different audience, and it’s one you can’t otherwise touch. A GTFS-Realtime feed also flows through to any other transit app or journey planner that consumes it, so one update multiplies out further than a single social post.<\/p>\n You don’t hand-code any of this. In AddTransit, a cancellation or delay is flagged as a Realtime Status update from your dashboard \u2014 you choose what’s affected (a route, a trip, a stop) and why, and that becomes a real GTFS-Realtime Service Alert, the same standard Google Maps and other journey planners read. It’s a short form, not something you or your IT team have to touch. Behind the scenes, GTFS-Realtime feeds use a technical format called protobuf, the same one Google Maps requires \u2014 normally something you’d need a software engineer to produce.<\/p>\n AddTransit generates it for you automatically the moment you publish the update, so you get a real, spec-compliant feed without writing a line of code. It is a deliberate step from your dashboard rather than something that fires itself, though \u2014 so it’s worth building “flag the cancellation” into your actual weather-day routine, not assuming it happens automatically.<\/p>\n This is what makes AddTransit’s setup comprehensive: static GTFS, the live realtime layer, and ticketing all run from the same platform, on the same feed, under the same account. Your schedule, your live cancellation alerts, and your bookings are connected end to end \u2014 not stitched together from separate tools.<\/p>\n If you run two sailings a day on a timetable that basically never changes, static GTFS alone is probably enough, and you don’t need to think about GTFS-Realtime any further. If your season is weather-driven and your phone rings every time the map is wrong, the realtime layer is the difference between passengers finding out from Google Maps and finding out from an angry voicemail.<\/p>\nWhy this is a ferry problem more than a bus problem<\/h2>\n
“But I already post cancellations on Facebook and our website”<\/h2>\n
What it actually takes<\/h2>\n
Is this for you?<\/h2>\n