GTFS to HTML

GTFS-to-HTML converts transit data in GTFS format into user-friendly HTML schedules. Many transit agencies have schedule data in GTFS format but need to show each route's schedule to users on a website. This project aims to automate the process of creating these schedules. Automating HTML schedule generation makes it easy to keep schedules up to date when data changes and reduces the likelihood of errors.

GTFS-to-HTML is currently used by Sonoma Country Transit to generate schedule pages for each route.

Setup

Install dependencies

npm install

Configure

Copy config-sample.json to config.json.

cp config-sample.json config.json

Agencies

Before you can use gtfs-to-html you must specify the transit agencies you'd like to use.

You can specify agencies using a url to the GTFS file or a local path.

To find an agency's GTFS URL, visit transitfeeds.com. You can use the direct URL from the agency or you can use a URL generated from the transitfeeds.com API along with your API token.

• Specify a download URL:

{
  "agencies": [
    {
      "agency_key": "county-connection",
      "url": "http://cccta.org/GTFS/google_transit.zip"
    }
  ]
}

• Specify a path to a zipped GTFS file:

{
  "agencies": [
    {
      "agency_key": "myAgency",
      "path": "/path/to/the/gtfs.zip"
    }
  ]
}

• Specify a path to an unzipped GTFS file:

{
  "agencies": [
    {
      "agency_key": "myAgency",
      path: "/path/to/the/unzipped/gtfs/"
    }
  ]
}

MongoDB URI

Add the MongoDB URI to config.json with the key mongo_url. Running locally, you may want to use mongodb://localhost:27017/gtfs.

{
  "mongo_url": "mongodb://localhost:27017/gtfs",
  "agencies": [
    {
      "agency_key": "myAgency",
      path: "/path/to/the/unzipped/gtfs/"
    }
  ]
}

effectiveDate

{String} This is printed at the top of the timetable.

    effectiveDate: 'July 8, 2015'

noServiceSymbol

{String} The symbol to be used when a specific trip does not serve a specified stop.

    noServiceSymbol: '—'

requestStopSymbol

{String} The symbol to be used to indicate that riders must request a stop.

    requestStopSymbol: '***'

showMap

{Boolean} Whether or not to show a map of the route on the timetable.

    showMap: false

showOnlyTimepoint

{Boolean} Whether or not all stops should be shown, or only stops with a timepoint value in stop_times.txt that is considered exact (i.e. empty or 1). Default is false, all stops shown.

    showOnlyTimepoint: false

zipOutput

{Boolean} Whether or not to zip the output into one zip file

    zipOutput: false

Build timetables.txt

This project requires that an additional file timetables.txt be added to an agencies GTFS. This file specifies which HTML timetables should be built.

An example of this file is located in examples/timetables.txt. The format of this file is:

column name	description
timetable_id	A unique ID for the timetable
route_id	The ID of the route the timetable is for from routes.txt.
direction_id	The direction_id from trips.txt for the timetable. This can be blank.
start_date	The start date for this timetable in YYYY-MM-DD format.
end_date	The end date for this timetable in YYYY-MM-DD format.
monday	A binary value that indicates whether this timetable should include service on Mondays. Valid options are 0 and 1.
tuesday	A binary value that indicates whether this timetable should include service on Tuesdays. Valid options are 0 and 1.
wednesday	A binary value that indicates whether this timetable should include service on Wednesdays. Valid options are 0 and 1.
thursday	A binary value that indicates whether this timetable should include service on Thursdays. Valid options are 0 and 1.
friday	A binary value that indicates whether this timetable should include service on Fridays. Valid options are 0 and 1.
saturday	A binary value that indicates whether this timetable should include service on Saturdays. Valid options are 0 and 1.
sunday	A binary value that indicates whether this timetable should include service on Sundays. Valid options are 0 and 1.
route_label	A short text label describing the route, for instance "4".
service_notes	Text shown on the timetable about the service represented, for instance "Mon-Fri".
orientation	Determines if the top row should be a list of trips or stops. Valid options are vertical and horizontal. vertical shows stops across the top row with each row being a list of stop times for each trip. horizontal shows trips across the top row with each row being stop times for a specific stop. horizontal orientation is best for routes with lots of stops and fewer trips while vertical orientation is best for routes with lots of trips and a smaller number of stops.

Multi-route Timetables

To allow creating a single timetable for multiple routes that overlap, you can have multiple entries in timetables.txt for the same timetable_id. These multi-route entries should have the same values timetable_id, start_date, end_date, calendar date, service_notes and orientation fields and should have different values for the route_id and route_label fields.

Build timetable_stop_order.txt

This is an optional file that can specify stop order for a particular timetable. It is useful when generating combined timetables for multiple overlapping routes, or exerting fine-grained control on stop order.

An example of this file is located in examples/timetable_stop_order.txt. The format of this file is:

column name	description
timetable_id	The ID of the timetable from timetables.txt
stop_id	The ID of the stop from stops.txt.
stop_sequence	An assigned integer identifying the order of stops to be presented in the timetable. The values for stop_sequence must be non-negative integers, and they must increase along the trip. This value does not need to match the stop_sequence found in stop_times.txt.

Running

Ensure than mongodb is running locally.

mongod

To generate HTML timetables, run the 'gtfs-to-html' script.

npm run gtfs-to-html

This will download the GTFS file specified in config.js . Then, it will build the HTML timetables and save them in html/:agency_key.

Options

Note the use of two sets of -- when running commands with arguments from npm.

nohead

npm run gtfs-to-html -- --nohead

This will generate embeddable HTML without an <html>, <head> or <body> tag.

Testing

After an initial run of the gtfs-to-html script, the GTFS data will be downloaded and loaded into mongo.

You can view an individual route HTML on demand by running the included express app:

DEBUG=gtfs-to-html npm start

With this running, you can open http://localhost:3000 in your browser and view all timetables. Note that this only works after GTFS has been imported to mongodb and mongodb is running locally.

Linting

npm run lint