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GTFS Realtime Changes

The GTFS Realtime Reference is not set in stone. Instead, it is an open specification developed and maintained by the community of transit agencies, developers, and other stakeholders who use GTFS Realtime. It is expected that this community of producers and consumers of GTFS Realtime data will have proposals for extending the spec to enable new capabilities.

To contribute to GTFS Realtime, read the GTFS Realtime Amendment Process and follow the discussions in the open issues and pull requests on the GTFS Github repository (google/transit).

Recently Adopted Proposals  

Recently merged proposals that are now features of the official GTFS Realtime reference. See the complete Revision History for more.

Add Trip-Modifications

#332 by gcamp was merged on Mar 11, 2024

  • Adds Trip modifications as an experimental feature which is used to describe detours, which affect a set of trips.
  • A trip modification can cancel certain stops, adjust the timing for trips, provide a new shape that trips will take and provide the location of temporary stops along the way.

Add DELETED enum to schedule_relationship

#332 by mads14 was merged on Nov 30, 2022

  • Adds a new experimental DELETED trip schedule_relationship enum
  • This can be used to convey that a transit provider intends for a trip to entirely disappear from public-facing applications

Add cause_detail and effect_detail to Alerts

#332 by mckenzie-maidl-ibigroup was merged on Jun 26, 2022

  • Adds descriptions to cause and effects of Alerts

GTFS-rt: wheelchair access update

#340 by flaktack was merged on Jul 25, 2022

  • Adds realtime information on trip accessibility
  • If provided, overwrites trips.wheelchair_accessible in the GTFS Schedule dataset

Feature/image in alerts

#283 by gcamp was merged on Nov 26, 2021

  • Adds a field of a URL link to an image (ex. photo or map) to be displayed in apps’ service alerts, in order to enhance comprehension of the alert
  • Changes include: enforced size limit of image, one image per alert, and ensuring URL changes if the content or language of the images changes

Add GTFS-NewShapes as experimental

#272 by ericouyang was merged on Aug 30, 2021

  • Ability to update route shapes in real time to reflect detours
  • Route updates are either reflected by referencing an existing shape_id or by defining in real time a new shape as an encoded polyline