Stops

Transitland represents each place a person may board or exit a transit vehicle as a Stop. Generally, these are imported from GTFS feeds, but Transitland also allows users to create Stops that are not associated with a Feed.

Stop data model

Each Transitland Stop has a unique onestop_id, such as s-9q9p1bbfkc-lakemerritt; the Onestop ID format includes an s prefix, a geohash encoding the approximate location, and a short identifier.

Basic Stop attributes include name, a simple name for the station that would be used on printed schedules, and timezone for the local timezone. The wheelchair_boarding attribute contains accessibility information: when true, the location is generally wheelchair accessible, when false it is known not to be accessible, and when null the accessibility is not known.

The geometry attribute may be either a single point or a polygon containing the station extent. In either case, the geometry_centroid attribute will always be a point that represents a single location. The centroid is set by 1) the geometry_reversegeo attribute if available 2) geometry if it is a point, or 3) the calculated centroid of geometry if it is a polygon. The location is also referenced by the osm_way_id attribute, which is the closest pedestrian-accessible OpenStreetMap way to the Stop. The osm_way_id is checked and updated periodically, approximately once every 48 hours, to reflect any changes to OpenStreetMap; last_conflated_at is the timestamp of the last check.

The Stops API also returns several relations to Operators and Routes for convenience. routes_serving_stop is an array of objects, one for each Route that visits the stop, and includes route_onestop_id and route_name as well as the operator_onestop_id and operator_name for the route’s operator. Similarly, operators_serving_stop includes the operator_onestop_id and operator_name for each Operator that serves the stop. served_by_vehicle_types is the aggregated vehicle_type of all the Routes that visit the stop.

Attribute	Type	Description
onestop_id	Onestop ID	Stop Onestop ID
geometry	Geometry	Stop geometry; can be point or polygon
name	String	Stop name
timezone	String	Stop timezone
osm_way_id	Integer	Conflated OSM way ID
last_conflated_at	Datetime	Timestamp of last time osm_way_id was checked
served_by_vehicle_types	Array	Vehicle types that visit this Stop
wheelchair_boarding	Boolean	Wheelchair accessible
geometry_reversegeo	Geometry	Alternate geometry; always a point
geometry_centroid	Geometry	Stop centroid; always a point
operators_serving_stop	Object array	Operators serving this Stop
routes_serving_stop	Object array	Routes serving this Stop
tags	Object	Tags

Stops API

Endpoint: /api/v1/stops

Standard entity query parameters:

Query parameter	Type	Description	Example
onestop_id	Onestop ID(s)	Onestop ID	Lake Merritt BART
lat	Float	Latitude	Near a point
lon	Float	Longitude	Near a point
r	Float	Radius (meters) for lat/lon	Within 1km of a point
bbox	Bounding box	Bounding box: ymin, xmin, ymax, xmax	Downtown Oakland
updated_since	Datetime	Entity has been modified since	Updated in 2017
imported_from_feed	Onestop ID	Imported from Feed	Imported from BART
imported_from_feed_version	Feed Version	Imported from Feed Version	Imported from a specific BART version
imported_with_gtfs_id	String(s)	Associated with GTFS entity	Imported from BART with GTFS ID “LAKE”
tag_key	String	Tag key	Includes tag “stop_url”
tag_value	String	Tag value	Tag “zone_id” is “1”
include	String(s)	Include in response: issues, geometry, imported_from_feeds	Include Issues and import data
exclude	String(s)	Exclude from response: issues, geometry, imported_from_feeds	Exclude geometry

Plus:

Query parameter	Type	Description	Example
served_by	Onestop ID(s)	Served by Operator or Route	Served by BART or AC Transit Line 1
served_by_vehicle_types	String(s)	Served by vehicle types	SFMTA light rail stops
wheelchair_boarding	Boolean	Wheelchair accessible	Accessible BART stations

Stop import process

When a new GTFS feed is imported, existing Transitland Stops are matched with GTFS stops.txt stops based on the GTFS stop_id used in the last import. If a match is found, the existing Transitland Stop is updated; if a match is not found, a new Transitland Stop is created.

Stations

Several Stops can be grouped together into a StopStation complex. A StopStation can have several StopPlatforms, each representing a platform where a transit vehicle can stop, and several StopEgresses, where pedestrians may enter or exit a station.

Stations data model

The StopStation, StopPlatforms and StopEgresses models are very similar to the plain Stop model.

The significant differences are that a StopStation will include nested StopPlatforms in stop_platforms and StopEgresses in stop_egresses. Additionally, the top-level StopStation will include operators_serving_stop_and_platforms, routes_serving_stop_and_platforms, and vehicle_types_serving_stop_and_platforms instead of the similarly named Stop relations.

A StopEgress includes an additional directionality attribute to note if a pedestrian can enter (street-to-station), exit (station-to-street), or both enter and exit the station. A StopEgress does not include operators_serving_stop and routes_serving_stop, since it is not visited by trips.

A StopPlatform does not include osm_way_id, last_conflated_at, or directionality, since it does not connect to the street network.

StopStations API

Endpoint: /api/v1/stop_stations

The StopStations endpoint has the same query parameters as the Stop endpoint, plus:

Query parameter	Type	Description	Example
min_platforms	Integer	Minimum number of StopPlatforms	At least 10 platforms
min_egresses	Integer	Minimum number of StopEgresses	At least 1 egress

Generated platforms and egresses

By default, the StopStations endpoint will include a generated StopEgress or StopPlatform if none exist, using the values from the StopStation. Any generated entity will have a generated attribute with a value of true. This commonly happens when a regular Stop with no platforms or egresses defined is accessed through the StopStations endpoint. This behavior can be disabled by setting the exclude query parameter to generated.