Roadmap

👋. As hosts of the Canonical GTFS Validator, MobilityData would like to share our big picture roadmap for the Canonical GTFS Validator going forward.

We invite other contributors to add any major items or vision they want to work on or solve!

• You're welcome to edit this wiki to add items, show your interest, or give visibility into your work.
• If you're looking to contribute something more specific have a look at contributing.md.

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Features

Evaluate changes on all GTFS datasets

• Need: Changes to Validator should not result in previously valid datasets becoming invalid.
• Feature: Run tests on a large number of expectedly valid datasets. MobilityData plan = leverage the Mobility Archives.
• Stakeholders: Google suggested.

📅.	👥	🛠️
2021 Q2	MobilityData	Implementation.

"Profile" structure

• Need: Consumers & regulatory bodies have requirements beyond the GTFS spec itself. Producers want test validity against these, too.
• Feature: Allow rules that are not in the spec itself yet but are required by various consumers or regulatory bodies. Validator users should be able to toggle to use their choice of additional rules beyond the core in-GTFS-spec rules.
• Stakeholders: Google and Cal-ITP interested.

📅.	👥	🛠️
2021 Q2	MobilityData	Design & implementation.

Integration into mobility repositories

• Need: Validity of data should be determined as early as possible to make errors easier to fix.
• Feature: Validator should run whenever data is published/ingested into data portals.
• Stakeholders: Cal-ITP interested.

📅.	👥	🛠️
2021 Q2	MobilityData	As we populate the Mobility Archives we will start running Validator on every dataset.

Results UI

• Need: A way for users to better understand content of the validation report.
• Feature: A web user interface that will present the content of the validation report.
• Stakeholders: Cal-ITP and MobilityData interested.

Local web UI

• Need: Make the Validator easily usable by anyone without a technical background. 
• Feature: Web user interface that will allow users to use an online instance of the gtfs-validator without having to use the command line.
• Stakeholders: Cal-ITP interested.

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Validation rules

Disambiguate spec, review rules

• Need: There is vague language in the GTFS specification leading to unclear validity in some cases.
• Feature: Clean up the spec, review existing validation rules accuracy according to updated spec.
• Stakeholders: Google, MobilityData.

📅.	👥	🛠️
2021 Q2	MobilityData	Working on clarifications in GTFS spec.

Update to reflect GTFS extensions

• Need: GTFS has been extended, validation of the additional concepts would help ease implementation.
• Feature: Add rules for each extensions. Areas needing rules include Pathways, Fares v2.
• Stakeholders: Cal-ITP and MobilityData interested.

GTFS Best Practices

• Need: Show if the data is compliant with the Best Practices.
• Feature: Add warnings to show if dataset is not complaint with Best Practices
• Stakeholders: MobilityData interested.

Validation against previous datasets

• Need: Discover errors that may have occurred as a result of updating dataset.
• Feature: Compare dataset to previous version. Flag if changes are widespread.
• Stakeholders: Cal-ITP interested.