In an effort to provide the traveling public with timely and accurate information about transportation mode choices, particularly “shared-ride” alternatives to driving alone, Michael Baker International, in conjunction with the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority (NJTPA) developed a data model and workflow for creating, publishing and maintaining a General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS). The NJTPA Shared Pilot Shared Transportation Services Data Model project included information from twenty-three (23) data feeds from fifteen (15) shared-ride agencies. Using a variety of technology including ArcGIS, python, and SQL server, Michael Baker developed an extract, transform and load (ETL) process to collect and validate transit data from the various transit agencies into one unified GTFS feed to be consumed by third party applications like Google and Apple. Additionally, Michael Baker and the NJTPA developed outreach, implementation and maintenance plans to support future development and expansion of the system as need and interest of shared-ride mode choices increase. In this session, attendees will learn about the GTFS format, its utilization for transit information dissemination, and how to leverage Python/ArcPy for automating the data unification process.
