➡️ Installation | Quick Start | Configuration ⬅️





Generate geoJSON of transit route data from a GTFS file.

---

gtfs-to-geojson converts transit data in GTFS format into geoJSON. This includes both shapes and stops. It can be configured to generate one geoJSON file per route or a single file which contains all routes for an agency. This is useful for creating maps of transit routes.

gtfs-to-geojson uses the node-gtfs library to handle importing and querying GTFS data. If you are looking to generate HTML timetables in addition to maps, check out the gtfs-to-html project. If you'd like to make a cool stringline chart of all trips on a route throughout the day, check out the gtfs-to-chart project.

Current Usage

Many transit agencies use gtfs-to-geojson to generate the maps for their websites, including:

• 511 Contra Costa
• County Connection
• Kings Area Rural Transit (KART)
• Marin Transit
• MVgo

Are you using gtfs-to-geojson? Let us know via email (brendan@blinktag.com) or via opening a github issue or pull request if your agency is using this library.

Installation

If you would like to use this library as a command-line utility, you can install it globally directly from npm:

npm install gtfs-to-geojson -g

If you are using this as a node module as part of an application, you can include it in your project's package.json file.

Quick Start

Command-line example

gtfs-to-geojson --configPath /path/to/your/custom-config.json

Code example

import gtfsToGeoJSON from 'gtfs-to-geojson';
import { readFile } from 'fs/promises';
const config = JSON.parse(
  await readFile(new URL('./config.json', import.meta.url))
);

gtfsToGeoJSON(config)
  .then(() => {
    console.log('GeoJSON Generation Successful');
  })
  .catch((err) => {
    console.error(err);
  });

Configuration

Copy config-sample.json to config.json and then add your projects configuration to config.json.

cp config-sample.json config.json

A sample configuration that pulls in GTFS for 29 Bay Area transit agencies is at config-sample-bayarea.json. It is used generate data for the map on bayareatransitmap.com.

option	type	description
agencies	array	An array of GTFS files to be imported.
bufferSizeMeters	integer	Radius of buffers in meters. Optional, defaults to 400 meters (1/4 mile).
coordinatePrecision	integer	The number of decimal places to include in the latitude and longitude of coordinates and geojson simplification. Optional.
endDate	string	A date in YYYYMMDD format to use to filter calendar.txt service. Optional, defaults to using all service in specified GTFS.
outputType	string	The grouping of the output. Options are "agency", "route" and "shape". Optional, defaults to "agency".
outputFormat	string	The format of the output. Options are "envelope", "convex", "stops", "stops-buffer", "stops-dissolved", "lines", "lines-buffer", "lines-dissolved" and "lines-and-stops". Optional, defaults to "lines-and-stops".
startDate	string	A date in YYYYMMDD format to use to filter calendar.txt service. Optional, defaults to using all service in specified GTFS.
sqlitePath	string	A path to an SQLite database. Optional, defaults to using an in-memory database.
verbose	boolean	Whether or not to print output to the console. Optional, defaults to true.
zipOutput	boolean	Whether or not to zip the output into one zip file. Optional, defaults to false.

agencies

{Array} Specify the GTFS files to be imported in an agencies array. GTFS files can be imported via a url or a local path.

Each file needs an agency_key, a short name you create that is specific to that GTFS file. For GTFS files that contain more than one agency, you only need to list each GTFS file once in the agencies array, not once per agency that it contains.

To find an agency's GTFS file, visit transitfeeds.com. You can use the URL from the agency's website or you can use a URL generated from the transitfeeds.com API along with your API token.

• Specify a download URL:

{
  "agencies": [
    {
      "agency_key": "county-connection",
      "url": "http://cccta.org/GTFS/google_transit.zip"
    }
  ]
}

• Specify a path to a zipped GTFS file:

{
  "agencies": [
    {
      "agency_key": "myAgency",
      "path": "/path/to/the/gtfs.zip"
    }
  ]
}

• Specify a path to an unzipped GTFS file:

{
  "agencies": [
    {
      "agency_key": "myAgency",
      "path": "/path/to/the/unzipped/gtfs/"
    }
  ]
}

• Specify multiple agencies (each one will be imported and processed separately). See config-sample-bayarea.json for a working example of processing multiple agencies.

{
  "agencies": [
    {
      "agency_key": "myAgency",
      "path": "/path/to/the/gtfs.zip"
    },
    {
      "agency_key": "otherAgency",
      "path": "/path/to/the/othergtfs.zip"
    }
  ]
}

• Exclude files - if you don't want all GTFS files to be imported, you can specify an array of files to exclude.

{
  "agencies": [
    {
      "agency_key": "myAgency",
      "path": "/path/to/the/unzipped/gtfs/",
      "exclude": ["shapes", "stops"]
    }
  ]
}

• Optionally specify a proj4 projection string to correct poorly formed coordinates in the GTFS file

{
  "agencies": [
    {
      "agency_key": "myAgency",
      "path": "/path/to/the/unzipped/gtfs/",
      "proj": "+proj=lcc +lat_1=46.8 +lat_0=46.8 +lon_0=0 +k_0=0.99987742 +x_0=600000 +y_0=2200000 +a=6378249.2 +b=6356515 +towgs84=-168,-60,320,0,0,0,0 +pm=paris +units=m +no_defs"
    }
  ]
}

bufferSizeMeters

{Integer} Radius of buffers in meters. Optional, defaults to 400 meters (about 1/4 mile).

"bufferSizeMeters": 400

coordinatePrecision

{Integer} The number of decimal places to include in the latitude and longitude of coordinates and geojson simplification. Omit to avoid any rounding which will result in larger file size and longer processing time. 5 is a reasonable value (about 1.1 meters).

"coordinatePrecision": 5

endDate

{String} A date in YYYYMMDD format to use to filter service_ids in calendar.txt. Useful in combination with startDate configuration option. Optional, if not specified, all services in GTFS will be used.

    "endDate": "20240401"

outputType

{String} The grouping of the output. Options are "agency", "route" and "shape". Optional, defaults to agency.

outputType	Description
agency	Output one geoJSON file with all routes for a single agency combined together.
route	Output one geoJSON file per route and direction.
shape	Output one geoJSON file per shape_id.

"outputType": "agency"

outputFormat

{String} The format of the output. Options are "envelope", "convex", "stops", "stops-buffer", "stops-dissolved", "lines", "lines-buffer", "lines-dissolved" and "lines-and-stops". Optional, defaults to "lines-and-stops".

Only stops which are used in one or more routes will be output in geoJSON.

Format	Type	Description	Example	geoJSON
envelope	Bounding box	A rectangular box around route lines.		envelope.geojson
convex	Convex hull	A convex polygon around route endpoints.		convex.geojson
stops	Points	Stops as points.		stops.geojson
stops-buffer	Buffer	A buffer around stops.		stops-buffer.geojson
stops-dissolved	Dissolve	A dissolved buffer around stops.		stops-dissolved.geojson
lines	Lines	Routes as lines.		lines.geojson
lines-buffer	Buffer	A buffer around route lines.		lines-buffer.geojson
lines-dissolved	Dissolve	A dissolved buffer around route lines.		lines-dissolved.geojson
lines-and-stops	Points and Lines	Both points and lines for stops and routes.		lines-and-stops.geojson

    "outputFormat": "lines-and-stops"

sqlitePath

{String} A path to an SQLite database. Optional, defaults to using an in-memory database with a value of :memory:. If you want the data imported to persist, you need to specify a value for sqlitePath. Supports tilde as part of the path, like ~/Downloads/gtfs.

    "sqlitePath": "/tmp/gtfs"

startDate

{String} A date in YYYYMMDD format to use to filter service_ids in calendar.txt. Useful in combination with endDate configuration option. Optional, if not specified, all services in GTFS will be used.

    "startDate": "20240301"

verbose

{Boolean} If you don't want the import script to print any output to the console, you can set verbose to false. Defaults to true.

    "verbose": false

zipOutput

{Boolean} Whether or not to zip the output into one zip file named geojson.zip. Defaults to false.

    "zipOutput": false

Running

To generate geoJSON, run gtfs-to-geojson.

gtfs-to-geojson

By default, gtfs-to-geojson will look for a config.json file in the project root. To specify a different path for the configuration file:

gtfs-to-geojson --configPath /path/to/your/custom-config.json

This will download the GTFS file specified in config.js . Then, gtfs-to-geojson will create geoJSON and save it to geojson/:agency_key.

Options

configPath

gtfs-to-geojson --configPath /path/to/your/custom-config.json

skipImport

Skips importing GTFS into SQLite. Useful if you are rerunning with an unchanged GTFS file. If you use this option and the GTFS file hasn't been imported or you don't have an sqlitePath to a non-in-memory database, you'll get an error.

gtfs-to-geojson --skipImport

Processing very large GTFS files.

By default, node has a memory limit of 512 MB or 1 GB. If you have a very large GTFS file, use the max-old-space-size option. For example to allocate 12 GB:

export NODE_OPTIONS="--max-old-space-size=30000"
gtfs-to-geojson

Credits

Ideas for including buffers, envelopes and convex service-area polygons came from gtfs-service-area.

Contributing

Pull requests are welcome, as is feedback and reporting issues.