Best practices for creating GTFS

The General Transit Feed Specification allows for transit features to be described using a variety of approaches. In some cases, particular approaches will result in better results in GTFS-consuming applications. Various pages on the web offer advice on best practices for creating GTFS.

Official:

• GTFS.org Industry-Standard Best Practices - These Best Practices are agreed to and published by 17 industry partners. These are the most broadly-accepted and complete GTFS Best Practices.

Unofficial:

• The Transit App developers page provides "Open Data Guidelines" which includes recommendations on how to form GTFS for best results in the application.
• Google Maps has a GTFS Best Practices Guide
• An open Google Doc has captured some best practices from members of the GTFS community.
• RideSchedules provides GTFS Publisher Best Practices for creating and hosting GTFS.
• Kurt Raschke provides recommendations for how to host GTFS data on a server to ensure update availability in consuming applications.
• Quentin Zervaas's Book The Definitive Guide to GTFS offers some discussion of GTFS best practices and style choices.
• FeedValidator's errors and warnings reference provides an inventory of some common GTFS defects to avoid. feedvalidator.py software can automatically identify these potential issues.
• Best practices and application-behavior context for specifying headsigns in GTFS from Trillium.
• The Center for Urban Transportation Research at the University of South Florida has identified some best practices as part of their experience with GTFS-realtime feeds.
• How to Open a GTFS Feed in the Browser