Invalid arrival/departure_time in Sydney Trains GTFS bundle

Real-time Public Transport
1

Hi there,

We are importing the GTFS bundle for Sydney Trains daily, and today’s has failed due to some invalid arrival/departure_time fields in the stop_times.txt file:

In the sample below, some of the arrival and departure times are invalid, i.e.: "::"

"trip_id","arrival_time","departure_time","stop_id","stop_sequence","stop_headsign","pickup_type","drop_off_type","shape_dist_traveled"
"1--A.1139.102.130.A.8.43239542","05:59:00","05:59:00","2144243","8","Empty Train","1","1",""
"1--A.1139.102.130.A.8.43239542","06:02:00","06:10:00","2141311","14","","0","0",""
"1--A.1139.102.130.A.8.43239542","06:15:30","06:18:00","2127102","25","","1","0",""
"1--A.1307.121.132.A.8.43269993","::","::","2144243","8","Empty Train","1","1",""
"1--A.1307.121.132.A.8.43269993","::","::","2141311","14","","0","0",""
"1--A.1307.121.132.A.8.43269993","::","::","2127102","25","","1","0",""
"1--A.1307.121.2.A.8.43269993","::","::","2144243","8","Empty Train","1","1",""
"1--A.1307.121.2.A.8.43269993","::","::","2141311","14","","0","0",""
"1--A.1307.121.2.A.8.43269993","::","::","2127102","25","","1","0",""
"1--A.1317.114.128.A.8.43322564","05:59:30","05:59:30","2144243","8","Empty Train","1","1",""
"1--A.1317.114.128.A.8.43322564","06:02:30","06:10:30","2141311","14","","0","0",""
"1--A.1317.114.128.A.8.43322564","06:16:00","06:18:00","2127102","25","","1","0",""
"1--A.1317.114.2.A.8.43840368","05:59:00","05:59:00","2144243","8","Empty Train","1","1",""
"1--A.1317.114.2.A.8.43840368","06:02:00","06:10:00","2141311","14","","0","0",""
"1--A.1317.114.2.A.8.43840368","06:15:30","06:18:00","2127102","25","","1","0",""
"1--A.1414.107.128.A.8.43131213","05:59:00","05:59:00","2144243","8","Empty Train","1","1",""
"1--A.1414.107.128.A.8.43131213","06:02:00","06:10:00","2141311","14","","0","0",""
"1--A.1414.107.128.A.8.43131213","06:15:30","06:18:00","2127102","25","","1","0",""

Could someone please take a look at this urgently, as without this working correctly, we will lose realtime information for trains in Sydney?

Many thanks,

David

2

Hi there,

This seems to have rectified itself, but it is worrying that invalid data like this can get into the GTFS bundle. Could someone please have a look and let us know what happened, since this sort of thing has a direct impact on our customers?

Many thanks,

David

3

Hi @david.else, we’ll investigate this and get back to you with more details.

Thanks.
Alex

4

Great, thanks Alex.

5

Hi @david.else, we have been informed that at midnight on October 2 an update was deployed to the trains feed in which some configuration to compensate for daylight savings time changes was applied incorrectly. This caused invalid schedule times in the GTFS bundles generated at 1:30 am and 5:00 am. The issue was then fixed for the bundle published at 6:00 am.

Judging by the time you first raised the issue it sounds like this was the cause of the problem you encountered. Can you please confirm?

Thanks.
Alex

6

Hi @alejandro.felman,

Thanks for looking into the issue; I can confirm that those times look about right for the issues we were encountering. I’m glad that it was a one-off update issue, rather than an indication of something more systemic.

Many thanks,

David

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