Abstract
Many of us have come to rely on real-time public transport updates in apps like Google Maps. These apps are powered by standardized data formats that ensure different systems can communicate. Google first introduced GTFS in 2005, a format designed to organize transit schedules, stop locations, and other static transit information. Then, in 2011, they introduced GTFS Realtime (GTFS-RT), which added the capability to include live updates on vehicle positions, delays, speeds, and much more.
However, as the name suggests, GTFS Realtime is all about live data. This means that while GTFS-RT APIs are useful for providing real-time insights, they don’t hold historical data for analytics. Moreover, most transit agencies don’t keep past GTFS-RT records, and even fewer make them available to the public. This can be a significant challenge for anyone looking to analyze past trends and extract valuable insights from the data. For this reason, we had to implement our own solution to efficiently archive GTFS-RT files while making sure the files could be queried easily.