Center for Urban Transportation Research | University of South Florida

Development of a Regional Public Transportation GIS Architecture and Data Model with FDOT D7

Sean J. Barbeau, Ph.D.

Funded by the National Center for Transit Research and the Florida Department of Transportation

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Overview

• Challenges in regional transportation coordination

• Regional GIS Architecture and Data Model• Demo• Next Steps

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Introduction

• Regional intermodal transportation coordination is important– Planning, construction, and operations of roads

can affect transit, and vice versa• Coordination can increase efficiency and cost-

effectiveness for overlapping areas of service– E.g., Construction can be coordinated for roads

and transit stops

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Challenges

• Regional transportation coordination is difficult– Many jurisdictions with many points of contact– Constantly changing data– Data often stored in different formats– Various levels of technical expertise at different

agencies– Time consuming to manually

exchange/format/analyze data

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Regional GIS Architecture and Data Model Project

• Concept:– Create a common data format for all transit agencies

in a region (i.e., data model)– Create software to automatically retrieve transit

data from regional agencies and import into FDOT District 7 geodatabase (i.e., GIS architecture)

• Benefits:– Reduce data exchange/formatting efforts– Common web-based view of intermodal data for all

agencies

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Transit Data Update Strategy

• Leverage existing General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) data and process– GTFS used for Google Transit, other apps

GTFS data consists of multiple text files GTFS data powers Google Transit and other apps

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Known Florida agencies with GTFS data• HART – Tampa• PSTA – Clearwater/St. Pete• SCAT - Sarasota• LeeTran – Lee County• SCAT – Space Coast• BCT – Broward• MDT – Miami-Dade• Lynx – Orlando• RTS – Gainesville• Citrus Connection – Lakeland• TriRail – Pompano Beach

• Estimated cost for putting data in GTFS format using consultant is $200-500 per route

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Adding new fields to GTFS data

• The project working group identified additional data that would be useful beyond existing GTFS data fields– Bus stop amenities– Further route classifications (e.g., local vs. express)– Performance stats (e.g., boardings, alightings per stop)

• Agencies add new fields to the GTFS route.txt and stops.txt files. e.g., for stops.txt:stop_id bike_rack sign park_and_

rideshelter trash_can restroom boardings alightings

1645 0 1 0 1 1 0 35.573205 17.61923

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Regional GIS Architecture

CUTR GTFS Data Sync Desktop

Application

GTFS conversion to spatial data

format

FDOT D7 Infastructure

Spatial Database

Web Server

.

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.

.TransitAgency

WebServers

HART Server

PSTA Server

HTTP Request

GTFS file

Agency Data

Internet/Intranet Users CUTR Regional Data Visualization

Web Application

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Process per Agency Schedule Update

1. Transit agency (estimated 30 min to 3 hrs of work):a) Adds extra fields to their GTFS data, and b) Uploads the google_transit.zip file to the

agency’s website

2. FDOT D7 runs the GTFS Data Sync software:

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Regional Visualization Website

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Regional Visualization Website

• Additional details are available when zooming in

FDOT Work Program Data

HART Data

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Regional Visualization Website

• Clicking on a bus stop gives additional info in popup

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Regional Visualization Website

• Clicking on a route gives additional info in popup

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Regional Visualization Website

• Clicking on a FDOT D7 work program gives info from D7 database

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Regional Visualization Website

• Can query data via toolbar – e.g., shows all stops with shelters

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Challenges

• Varying skills levels of data analysts at agencies1. Highly skilled2. Data analysis is secondary duty3. Data analysis is outsourced

• In our pilot project, HART and PSTA were able to provide full datasets (GTFS + extras)– PCPT didn’t yet have a bus stop inventory or GTFS dataset

• Determining when to collect data is a challenge• Potential lack of shape info in GTFS feed

– Not required per GTFS spec– Without shape info of bus path, “connect-the-dots” of bus stops

is shown as route shape

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Next Steps

• Production deployment of tools at FDOT D7– Integration of tools into FDOT D7 workflow

• FDOT D7 will coordinate with regional transit agencies so the agency uploads their new data with every schedule change

• FDOT D7 investigating sharing website publicly so agencies can also view the data

• Source code for project is open-source, so any agency or vendor can use/update it:– https://github.com/CUTR-at-USF/RegionalTransitArchit

ecture/wiki

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Questions?

Sean J. Barbeau, Ph.D.barbeau@cutr.usf.edu813.974.7208

Research AssociateCenter for Urban Transportation ResearchUniversity of South Florida