Get Public Transit Schedule Data (GTFS)

How-To
Instructions on retrieving public transit schedule GTFS data.
Modified

2024-06-28

These pages are short step-by-step instructions on how-to get something done, in particular retrieve the required input data for assess-gtfs.

Regardless of the source of GTFS, assess-gtfs expects feeds to be compressed zip archives.

assess-gtfs was written to prepare GTFS feeds for a comparison of British & French urban transport performance. This guide covers ingesting data from those territories. For other global territory data, consult the GTFS data index.

We recommend keeping your feed in your project directory under “data/external”. If you are using git version control, ensure that this directory is git-ignored.

British GTFS

Bus

  1. Access the Bus Open Data Service
  2. Click on “Timetables data”
  3. Create an account (if needed)
  4. Navigate to “Download regional and national data sets in GTFS format”
  5. Select the region of interest and click the link to download the file.

Rail

  1. Access National Rail Data Portal
  2. Create or register for an account (if needed)
  3. Access the GB timetable GTFS from the daily feed section

French GTFS

  1. Visit transport.data.gouv.fr for bus and rail GTFS
  2. Search for the region of France that you wish to acquire GTFS for.
  3. Alternatively, you can browse the available data by map, table or read the API documentation under the section “You can also”.
  4. Once you have selected an entry, ensure that it is tagged as “gtfs”, but not “gtfs-r”, which stands for “realtime”.
  5. Make note of the indicated transit modality and click “Download” to save the zip archive to disk.
  6. Optionally, use the site’s validation tool to check the quality of a file or feed.