[GTFS Digest] July 2025 - Celebrating Governance, New Contributors, and New Conversations!¶
Welcome to another edition of the GTFS Digest. This month, we saw the adoption of the new Governance framework after two years of community-driven feedback. If you’re curious about what’s changed, check out our documentation. Although there aren’t any proposals actively being voted on, that doesn’t mean Github isn’t active! There are quite a few conversations happening at the moment, so read on to find out more.
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. This month we’d like to highlight the following contributions.
| Contributor | Contribution |
|---|---|
| Alex Rubin, Erich Ludwig, Caleb Winter, Gabriel Saavedra, and Michael Wilson | Welcome to the GTFS Community! |
| Jessy Dumont and Craig O | First questions asked on the #gtfs and #gtfs-realtime Slack channels! |
| natekauf | Opened a discussion on GTFS-RT Alerts with a great number of common scenarios modelled out. |
🗳️ Currently Voting¶
Currently, there are no proposals in an active voting stage.
🚀 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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 7, 2025 |
📂 Active Proposals¶
These proposals are seeing a lot of discussion and could use your input!
| Proposal | Advocate | Description | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| add trip_route_type into trips.txt GTFS static #572 | miklcct(Jnction) | This proposal adds a new optional field, called trip_route_type, into trips.txt. | Discussion Period |
| 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 |
Other open proposals:¶
- [GTFS Fares v2] Semantics clarification #561
- [GTFS-Fares v2] Add Distance-Based Fares #556
- Add communication_period and impact_period #546
- 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Add activities field to informed_entity in GTFS-realtime alerts #573 | natekauf | This issue proposes the addition of a new activities field within informed_entity in the GTFS Realtime Alert spec. This field would have enumerated values of BOARD, EXIT, and RIDE, which describe the rider activities that are unavailable at a given stop. |
| Required type of transportation at routes level may lack flexibility (multi-modal routes) #409 | barbagus | This issue shares concerns around the potential inflexibility of route_type with multimodal routes, and suggests potential ways of addressing it. |
| 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. |
| Defining a route type at the trip level #358 | vpaturet | This discussion explores the possibility of adopting a new "trip_route_type" field for cases where trips in a certain route are scheduled with an alternate transport mode. This issue has captured some new comments after PR #572 was opened. |
🔥 Most Active Conversations on Slack¶
This month’s round-up of the most active discussions on the GTFS Slack channels.
| Author | Description | Slack Channel |
|---|---|---|
| Jessy | Asked about the main differences between shapes and the stop coordinates | #gtfs |
| Wes | Inquired about marking routes as BRT in GTFS | #gtfs |
| Weston | Inquired about the possibility of reintroducing eligibility restrictions to encourage wider Flex adoption | #gtfs-flex |
| Michael | Looked for someone with experience in developing MaaS apps in places where real-time data is kept secret. | #gtfs-realtime |
| Craig O | Requested methods to find realtime data to test on | #gtfs-realtime |
| Isabelle | Asked if it was ever considered to use GTFS Realtime to assign quays for rail | #gtfs-realtime |
📅 Upcoming Events¶
| Event | Date | Location |
|---|---|---|
| GTFS Fares V2 – Working Group Meeting | Aug 26, 2025at 11am EST | Online |
💬 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.