[GTFS Digest] June 2025 - Vote on Governance and Check Out a New Field!¶
The June 2025 GTFS Digest is here! This month, the vote for the new GTFS Governance structure began with a deadline of July 6, 2025. Be sure to check out the discussion and get your votes in! The GTFS community also passed a proposal to add a “cars_allowed” field and created a proposal on the Best Practices for hosting GTFS data. Many new conversations started on Slack, with great responses from contributors!
The GTFS Digest is a resource distributed monthly by MobilityData providing an overview of developments on GTFS.
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🏅 Contributor Shoutouts¶
Every month we highlight the contributions the GTFS community has made across Github. This month we’d like to highlight the following contributions.
| Contributor | Contribution |
|---|---|
| Matthew Novelli (MTD.org) | Posted on multiple slack channels and shared a GTFS visualization tool |
| Bogdan Minea | Addressed and cleared multiple questions in the slack channels |
| Darwin O’Conner (transSee) | Contributed to multiple GitHub issues and pull requests |
| Brady Hubsaker, Mike McQueen (TriMet), Nathan Hale (Deloitte), nkemphues | Thank you for your first contributions to the repo! |
🗳️ Currently Voting¶
Below is a list of proposals that are currently being voted on. We invite you to take a look and participate in the voting process.
| Proposal | Advocate | Description | Voting Deadline |
|---|---|---|---|
| New GTFS Schedule Governance Proposal #544 | eliasmbd (MobilityData) | This PR proposes an update to the current GTFS Governance Process based on two years of community feedback. | July 6, 2025 at 23:59:59 UTC. |
🚀 Recently Adopted¶
This month, we’re celebrating the proposals that made it across the finish line. Check them out below.
| Proposal | Advocate | Description | Adoption Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Add cars_allowed field to trips.txt #547 | VillePihlava | This PR proposes adding a cars_allowed field to trips.txt. There was a lot of discussion in issue #466 about how to add car information for ferries to GTFS. The discussion was centered around whether to use an approach with stop_times.txt or trips.txt. | June 26, 2025 |
📂 Active Proposals¶
These proposals are seeing a lot of discussion and could use your input!
| Proposal | Advocate | Description | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Add addition best practice on hosting GTFS files #567 | doconnoronca (Transee) | This proposal introduces a best practice for hosting GTFS files, recommending that public web servers avoid blocking non-browser requests or limiting access by region, focusing instead on preventing abusive behavior. | Discussion Period |
| [GTFS Fares v2] Semantics clarification #561 | tzujenchanmbd (MobilityData) | Based on recent discussions in the gtfs-fares Slack channel and working group, clarify some fares v2 related semantics including: Introduction of a Local Time data type, addition of an "effective fare leg"and a "timer should start from the first matched leg" clarification. | In Review |
| [GTFS-Fares v2] Add Distance-Based Fares #556 | skalexch (MobilityData) | This PR adds a new functionality to allow the modelling of Distance-based fare systems, by introducing multiple new fields on fare_leg_rules.txt and stop_times.txt as well as a new fare_leg_distance_rules.txt file. | Discussion Period |
| Add communication_period and impact_period #546 | skalexch (MobilityData) | This proposal introduces two new fields: communication_period specifying the time that alerts should be displayed and impact_period to specify the time when the services are affected by the disruption. Additionally, it establishes rules to ensure these new fields are mutually exclusive with active_period for consistency. | Discussion Period |
Other open proposals:¶
- Add cemv_support field in agency.txt and routes.txt #545
- Fix typos in gtfs-realtime.proto #541
- Enhancing GTFS Schedule and Realtime with original_trip_id #534
- Introduce boarding permissions to specify the carriage of vehicles at per-stop granularity #533
- Addition of event_based_trips.txt to specification #527
- Add stops.stop_access field #515
- Stop Time Events in the past should be kept #502
- [GTFS Fares v2] Add nonconsecutive_transfer_allowed field and clarify fare_transfer_type #498
- [GTFS Fares v2] Area Set matching predicates #483
- [GTFS-Fares v2] Fare product/media transfer behavior #423
🐙 Most Active Conversations on Github¶
Github Issues is a great place to start a conversation, whether it’s about a new feature idea or a question about a spec. Below are this month’s most active conversations.
| Conversation | Author | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Use of block_id together with required arrival_time and departure_time makes contradictory information too easy #569 | bradyhunsaker | This issue describes a problem displaying service information in trip planning apps, caused by mismatched times between block_id-linked trips in GTFS feeds, leading to duplicate or conflicting departures. He suggests two fixes: align the times between linked trips or allow omitting non-meaningful times at terminal stops. |
| Add field for distance units #568 | nkemphues | This issue highlights the problems caused by the lack of a defined distance unit in GTFS feeds. The proposal suggests adding an optional distance_unit field to clarify the units used in files like shapes.txt and fare_legs.txt. |
| Relax conditionally forbidden nature of prior_notice_start_day in booking_rules.txt #566 | m-mcqueen (TriMet) | This issue proposes to relax the conditional forbidden rule for booking_rules.prior_notice_start_day when booking_type=0 to cover the booking rules of some microtransit services. |
| Additional Accessibility Functionality for GTFS-Realtime? #565 | nathanhale (Deloitte Digital) | Nathan asks: “Would there be a possibility of expanding GTFS-Realtime to additional types of accessibility beyond just wheelchairs?” |
🔥 Most Active Conversations on Slack¶
This month’s round-up of the most active discussions on the GTFS Slack channels.
| Author | Description | Slack Channel |
|---|---|---|
| Manjit | Inquired about any standards for the production of GTFS files | #gtfs |
| Leonardo | Requested a UML class diagram of GTFS | #gtfs |
| Matthew | Shared a tool that generates transit maps from a GTFS feed | #gtfs |
| Nate | Asked about the possibility of showing the distance unit in GTFS | #gtfs |
| Ethan | Shared a blog post about MBTA's implementation of a platform accessibility performance measure using archived GTFS and elevator alerts | #gtfs |
| Mike | Requested good examples of stop_desc and route_desc in GTFS Flex files | #gtfs-flex |
| Cody | Asked about the interactions between GTFS Service Alerts and GTFS Trip Modifications when implemented by different producers | #gtfs-realtime |
| Matthew | Requested tools that help with GTFS-RT debugging | #gtfs-realtime |
| Zachary | Inquired about ways to add driver IDs in GTFS | #gtfs-realtime |
💬 Join the GTFS Community¶
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Join Slack and introduce yourself to the community.
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Subscribe to the GTFS Digest for monthly updates about all things GTFS.
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Join GTFS Changes Google Group to stay informed on development.
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Visit GitHub to post issues, participate in discussions around changes, and, propose changes.
Thank you for reading this edition of the GTFS Digest! We look forward to bringing you the latest GTFS updates in 2025 and beyond.