Christmas buses now available in the buses feed

Data updates
1

Christmas buses are now available in the vehicle position data. The buses are identified in the feed by the ‘special_vehicle_attributes’ field. When it’s “=1” it is a Christmas bus, when “=0” it is not. Here’s an example:

entity {
  id: "33553_11466389_2436_607X_1"
  vehicle {
    trip {
      trip_id: "299400"
      start_time: "08:49:00"
      start_date: "20161209"
      schedule_relationship: SCHEDULED
      route_id: "2436_607X"
    }
    position {
      latitude: -33.7626571655
      longitude: 151.020309448
      bearing: 88.0
      speed: 22.7000007629
    }
    timestamp: 1481235603
    congestion_level: RUNNING_SMOOTHLY
    vehicle {
      id: "33553_11466389_2436_607X_1"
      [transit_realtime.tfnsw_vehicle_descriptor] {
        air_conditioned: true
        wheelchair_accessible: 1
        special_vehicle_attributes: 1
      }
    }
    occupancy_status: FEW_SEATS_AVAILABLE
  }

Feel free to post any questions you might have in this thread.

Thanks,
Alex

2 Likes
2

Hey Alex,

Is there a special .proto file which will allow us to access these attributes?

edit: Answered my own question! This is the .proto file for buses – turns out I’ve been using the one for trains.

3 Likes
3

hey @jxeeno and others… let us know if you are displaying the xmas buses anywhere please :christmas_tree:

4

Hi, I am probably missing something, what are the values for special_vehicle_attributes? For example, 1 = Christmas bus. I can see value of special_vehicle_attributes = 2.

5

Catch Wi-Fi, I believe.

1 Like
6

Cross-checking with NextThere, it would appear to be the case. :slight_smile:

7

Thanks yet again. Hopefully Open Data has the complete list of the values. Also wondering what happens if it is a Christmas bus with catch wi-fi (permutation values? :slight_smile:)

8

Purely speculation, but my guess is they might end up using bitwise operations, e.g.:

let CHRISTMAS_BUS = 1;
let CATCH_FREE_WIFI = 2;
let SOME_OTHER_ATTR = 4;

// both xmas bus and catch free wifi
CHRISTMAS_BUS | CATCH_FREE_WIFI // = 3

// both some attr and xmas bus
SOME_OTHER_ATTR | CHRISTMAS_BUS // = 5

// both catch free wifi and some other attr
CATCH_FREE_WIFI | SOME_OTHER_ATTR // = 6

// all attributes
CHRISTMAS_BUS | CATCH_FREE_WIFI | SOME_OTHER_ATTR // = 7
9

Good tip… we’ll get this added to the documentation on one of our pages (maybe Tips and Troubleshooting)

10

ha! so that’s exactly what they’ve done

11

Xmas buses are back in the buses vehicle position feed for 2019! They will be flagged as special_vehicle_attributes: 4

12

Xmas buses for 2020 are now flagged in the buses vehicle position GTFS-R feed.
Special_vehicle_attributes are populated as per the attached bitmask values - keep an eye out for value 12 to get your xmas bus fix.

special_vehicle_bitmask
special_vehicle_bitmask722×891 63.7 KB

1 Like
13

Xmas buses are back in the Buses GTFS-R vehicle position feed for 2021! Possible values are 4 and 12 as per documentation above.

14

It’s that time of year! Christmas decorated buses are currently flagged in our real-time feeds, so you can track them in apps like AnyTrip, NextThere and TripView
Please checkout feeds at Public Transport - Realtime Vehicle Positions v2 - Dataset - TfNSW Open Data Hub and Developer Portal