[Open-transport] Dutch Community wants to get in touch with the German Community

Sat Aug 4 17:35:58 UTC 2012

Am 04.08.2012 14:55, schrieb Stefan Wehrmeyer:

Hey you other Stefans :)

>> It seems that your national standard VDV has some Dutch implementations.
>> Did you guys already write any parsers or converters to GTFS?
>
> Not that I'm aware of, no. Also, it's the first time I heard about the VDV standard.

I'd love if there was any activity going on in that department. 
VDV-453/454 is the common language spoken by almost all ICTS in Germany, 
and most implementations of IBIS-based dynamical passenger information 
systems I know depend on it.

> There is a group of hackers from Ulm (ulmapi.de) that converted some other German standard to GTFS:
> https://github.com/UlmApi/swu2gtfs

We thought about snorkelling the VDV XML output to build our own GTFS 
set for a while, but thought otherwise when we got some data from the 
transportation authority themselves. That other German standard is TSV 
files they use to hand-set the printed timetables :)

A description of the EFA XML interface used by the Linz AG Linien can be 
found at 
http://ckan.data.linz.gv.at/package/elektronische-fahrplanauskunft-der-linz-ag-linien 
-- either their EFA was made by MentzDV as well (just as „ours“) or they 
are really compatible across the board.

You might wanna contact Fox (@taxilof) if you're interested in this 
interface; in the mean time, his ancient implementation at 
<http://www.uni-ulm.de/~s_sfuchs/buswatch/> is all I could find right now.

> But I haven't heard of any normal developer even getting in touch with the VDV format.
> The VDV is apparently our alliance of transport authorities. When these guys work on a standard,
> it may be excellent, but it's a closed-off super expert committee standard kind a thing.

Hey, I thought I talked to you a bit about that interface in May ;)

Seriously, though: I read into the standard a bit last fall, and from 
what I've heard from the local transit agencies, I reckon it's not only 
something rotting away in a drawer, but being actually used. I have yet 
to get my hands onto an actual IBIS computer, but I can't imagine how 
they'd display connecting buses prior to a stop otherwise (what with 
being VDV-454 apparently being about the only interface the usual ICTS 
speak)

regards,
-stk