Getting started
Sometimes public transport does not work according to timetables. Vehicles may arrive earlier or later than expected or not at all. In a situation like that the real-time information can be very useful.
Glossary
| Term | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Real-time information | An umbrella term for data that is based on vehicle movements and alerts generated by human operators and automatic systems (data received with no delay). |
| Vehicle position | Vehicle’s real geographic position, represented by latitude and longitude. |
| Real-time prediction | Based on vehicle’s planner route and its current position some system makes a prediction when vehicle really arrives to some point. |
| Service alert | A description about a disruption that happens in public transport. |
| GTFS-Realtime (or GTFS-RT) | A standard for transportation agencies to provide real-time updates about their fleet. |
GTFS-Realtime
GTFS-Realtime (or GTFS-RT) provides three kinds of feeds:
Our goal is to provide GTFS-RT feeds for you.
Real-time predictions are available in the Routing API
Real-time data is read into the Routing API. This means that the Routing API returns results that contain predictions. You can read more about that at the Routing API pages.
Situation of the API
Situation at
The current OpenTransport implementation is a "partially working solution" built on top of legacy APIs. This means that:
- Not all vehicles have real-time information available
- There might be errors in the real-time data
If you are really interested in implementing real-time features, you should look at OpenTransport-ui and its source code. That way you can get an idea how real-time is used there.
Situation at the STPT Transport Agency
Currently, STPT provides real-time information for trains at []...... #todo] We have a simple wrapper (raildigiraffic2gtfsrt) that transforms that data to GTFS-RT trip updates.
Situation in other cities
We don't have much control over the other cities and the data they provide, but we have integrated data from Oulu for example, just to see how it behaves.