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Bay Area Regional GTFS Feed: 31 transit agency feeds together in one API

interline.io

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Re: Bay Area Regional GTFS Feed: 31 transit agency feeds together in one API

#21

Post by et-al »

paxys wrote: post #3

On one hand, this is a great effort and I'm sure will help commuters a ton. But on the other, why on earth does the bay area have 31+ different transit agencies??

Google Maps and the Transit App already ingest GTFS feeds for trip routing and predicting arrivals.

A regional feed would make things easier for developers, not so much commuters, who are already relying on aforementioned products.

For anyone interested in playing with GTFS feeds in their area, I recommend checking out TransitFeeds' list: https://transitfeeds.com/feeds

Re: Bay Area Regional GTFS Feed: 31 transit agency feeds together in one API

#22

Post by drewda »

robbi5 wrote: post #11
drewda wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sharp eyes! ACE is included in the feed, but we did not include it in the animation. We don't currently have geometries for the route alignment (the train tracks), so we'd be drawing straight lines between the ACE stops — didn't look that great in the GIF, so we left it out. [Note: I'm an Interline staffer]

If you want a quite fast and nice solution for aligning routes, pfaedle[1] is a great tool that creates a gtfs shapes.txt by using open street map train track / street data. [1]: https://github.com/ad-freiburg/pfaedle

Nice. Thanks for sharing.

For what it's worth, this would bring ODbL-licensed data into an output GTFS feed.

Re: Bay Area Regional GTFS Feed: 31 transit agency feeds together in one API

#23

Post by et-al »

lilyball wrote: post #18

The article didn't explain what a GTFS feed was, and my first thought was it's a "Get The Fuck Somewhere feed". Turns out it's General Transit Feed Specification.

Fun fact: GTFS used to be Google Transit Feed Specification:

https://sf.streetsblog.org/2010/01/05/how-google-and-portlan...

Re: Bay Area Regional GTFS Feed: 31 transit agency feeds together in one API

#24

Post by mc32 »

paxys wrote: post #3

On one hand, this is a great effort and I'm sure will help commuters a ton. But on the other, why on earth does the bay area have 31+ different transit agencies??

Agreed. They need to merge and coördinate agencies. Someone like abag could become the MTA or the ny-nj port authority.

Re: Bay Area Regional GTFS Feed: 31 transit agency feeds together in one API

#26

Post by bytematic »

lilyball wrote: post #18

The article didn't explain what a GTFS feed was, and my first thought was it's a "Get The Fuck Somewhere feed". Turns out it's General Transit Feed Specification.

It has all the bus stops and times for applications to use. Metros usually generate them to send to google for their app but they sometimes also publish them online for people to use.

Re: Bay Area Regional GTFS Feed: 31 transit agency feeds together in one API

#27

Post by jcims »

opportune wrote: post #16
jcims wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I’ve been thinking the past couple of years you should be able to vote in local elections in the area you work in, even if you don’t live there. Makes sense to me, especially if you are paying local income taxes in that area. I seem to recall from high school that 'taxation without representation' caused a big kerfluffle a couple hundred years ago.

I don’t think there are local income taxes (at least visible to the employee) but they are IMO a part of the community, pay taxes indirectly (property taxes where they work, sales taxes, etc.) and should have a say because of that.

Ahh, maybe in CA. In Ohio you have to pay income taxes where you work and where you live. If they are different places then there are usually some kind of weird commuter credits that never actually offset the difference.

Re: Bay Area Regional GTFS Feed: 31 transit agency feeds together in one API

#28

Post by unlinked_dll »

paxys wrote: post #3

On one hand, this is a great effort and I'm sure will help commuters a ton. But on the other, why on earth does the bay area have 31+ different transit agencies??

- Nine counties

- 7,000m^2

- 7.75 million people

- 101 municipal governments

Shocking that we only have 31+ transit agencies. The place is dense!

Re: Bay Area Regional GTFS Feed: 31 transit agency feeds together in one API

#29

Post by derefr »

BorgHunter wrote: post #17
opportune wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it actually worked well, people might use it, especially the undesirables. It’s also because the Bay Area is stupidly split up into dozens and dozens of small-medium sized municipalities spread over multiple counties. So every little group acts in their own locally optimal, shortsighted interests. Most of the people affected worst by the lack of public transportation and housing can’t vote in the areas that can ac…

> I’ve been thinking the past couple of years you should be able to vote in local elections in the area you work in, even if you don’t live there. In many areas this would effectively lead to the suburbs being able to dictate urban policy to the inner city, where suburban commuter interests like parking override the interests of the actual residents. The 1998 amalgamation of Toronto is a good example of this happenin…

> In many areas this would effectively lead to the suburbs being able to dictate urban policy to the inner city

Then perhaps "urban policy" is an unnatural category, combining conflicting interests.

Why not just have two municipal governments—one elected by those whose business interests lie within the city, which would be in charge of the city's business policy (e.g. corporate taxe and grants, arterial infrastructure, commercial zoning); and a separate one, elected by the city's urban residents, which would be in charge of the city's civic policy (e.g. estate taxes and VATs, non-arterial infrastructure, residential zoning, etc.)? These are essentially orthogonal problems that don't really "run into" each-other much; you could have two separate sets of people working on solving them without those groups needing to communicate all that much.

Municipal government is already somewhat factored this way, insofar as e.g. school boards and park boards are separately elected rather than being appointments of the municipal executive; and some of those elections are defined by different political boundaries (e.g. catchment areas for schools) than the election of the municipal executive is. Why not just go one step further?

Re: Bay Area Regional GTFS Feed: 31 transit agency feeds together in one API

#30

Post by gonehome »

opportune wrote: post #5
paxys wrote: post #3

On one hand, this is a great effort and I'm sure will help commuters a ton. But on the other, why on earth does the bay area have 31+ different transit agencies??

If it actually worked well, people might use it, especially the undesirables. It’s also because the Bay Area is stupidly split up into dozens and dozens of small-medium sized municipalities spread over multiple counties. So every little group acts in their own locally optimal, shortsighted interests. Most of the people affected worst by the lack of public transportation and housing can’t vote in the areas that can ac…

Aren't there enough of us to leverage power by voting as a block?

I know Palo Alto Forward was trying to do this a while back - it'd be nice if we could block vote in people that could massively upzone housing (or make whatever change is necessary to increase housing supply).

Myself and a lot of my friends live in these towns with roommates - I'd think if there was a clear group to vote for and clear policy to push to increase housing we'd have a lot of votes.

It's hard to even find what the existing law around building housing is, is it online anywhere?

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