MobilityData's gtfs-validator
A cross-platform validator for GTFS Schedule (static) transit data files, ensuring compliance with the official specification.
What is MobilityData's gtfs-validator?
GTFS Validator is an open-source tool that validates General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) Schedule files against the official standard. It checks static transit data feeds for integrity, correct data types, and compliance, generating detailed reports to identify issues. This helps ensure transit data is reliable and interoperable across different software systems.
Transit agency staff, GTFS data producers, open data publishers, and developers working with public transportation data who need to verify feed quality and compliance.
As the canonical validator maintained by MobilityData, it provides the most authoritative and up-to-date compliance checking against the GTFS Schedule specification. Its multiple deployment options and detailed, shareable reports make it the most versatile and trusted tool in the transit data ecosystem.
Overview
Canonical GTFS Validator project for schedule (static) files.
Use Cases
Best For
- Validating GTFS Schedule feeds before publication to ensure specification compliance
- Automating quality checks in CI/CD pipelines for transit data updates
- Debugging data issues in GTFS feeds from agencies or third-party providers
- Educational purposes to understand GTFS specification requirements
- Integrating validation into custom transit data processing workflows
- Sharing validation results with stakeholders via web-based reports
Not Ideal For
- Projects requiring validation of GTFS Real-Time feeds, as it only handles static Schedule data
- Environments where Java 17 or higher cannot be installed or managed, due to CLI and GUI dependencies
- Organizations with web servers that block custom user agents, as the validator's explicit user agent string can cause request failures in the web version
- Teams needing a lightweight, zero-dependency validator for simple, one-off checks without report generation
Pros & Cons
Pros
Validates against the full GTFS Schedule standard and best practices, with a detailed list of implemented rules available online, ensuring thorough compliance checks.
Offers web service, desktop app, command-line tool, and Docker container, making it adaptable for one-time validation, automated pipelines, or team collaboration.
Generates HTML reports with unique URLs that are accessible for 30 days, facilitating easy sharing and discussion among stakeholders without local file exchange.
Runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux via Java or native installers, ensuring broad accessibility across different operating systems for diverse users.
Cons
Requires Java 17 or higher to run the command-line and GUI versions, which can be a setup hurdle in environments without Java or with version conflicts.
The README admits issues with servers blocking custom user agents or non-browser requests, leading to validation failures that require workarounds or local input.
Limited to GTFS Schedule (static) validation and does not support GTFS Real-Time or other transit data formats, restricting its use for comprehensive transit data quality checks.
Running via Docker requires volume mounting and command-line expertise, which can be cumbersome for users unfamiliar with container management, as noted in the instructions.
Frequently Asked Questions
Related Projects
Google's feedValidatorA Python library for reading, validating, and writing transit schedule information in the GTFS format.
gtfstidyA tool for checking, sanitizing and minimizing GTFS feeds.
Conveyal's gtfs-libA library for loading and saving GTFS feeds of arbitrary size with disk-backed storage
Transport ValidatorGTFS validator
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