EDIT 12-03-2025: I accidentially broke the maps when deleting my AWS account, as the mbtiles were hosted there. Oops. In Sydney Commute Times Mapped Part 1 I took a small step to a bigger goal of mashing together public transport in Sydney, and the Metropolitan Strategy for Sydney to 2031. The question I wanted to answer is this: how aligned is Sydney’s public transport infrastructure and the Metropolitan Strategy’s of a “city of cities”?

EDIT 12-03-2025: I accidentially broke the maps when deleting my AWS account, as the mbtiles were hosted there. Oops. I quite like open data. I like data based on open standards (or mostly open standards) even better. Many transport operators around the world have started releasing their timetable data using (mostly) open standards, e.g. GTFS. One of the nice things about using a standard is that clever people have created tools to work with the timetable data, and those tools can now be used to manipulate timetable data from hundreds of agencies. The magnificent OpenTripPlanner is one such tool, and it works well with 131500’s GTFS data.

TDX data has been available for a number of years on 131500.info, but many tools are GTFS specific. I also find GTFS easier to work with. Luckily, converting from TDX to GTFS is not overly difficult, and below are some instructions. This howto is a bit old, as I am only now copying it from my “Notes” folder to put online to help others. Note: You can now directly download GTFS from the TransportInfo website: https://tdx.131500.com.au

A short while ago I wrote about visualizing transport by using 131500’s TDX data, converted to GTFS, and served by GeoServer. Because I’ve started playing around with Google’s Fusion table, I thought it would be interesting to see what all the transit stops in Sydney look like in FT. So, voila!

If you want to use Graphserver to do some analysis with GTFS, you will need to convert GTFS into the database. This is how I did it. I used the following AMI. If you have enough memory, you don’t need to do this. ami-7000f019 Lookup and read the GTFSDB INSTALL.txt document sudo apt-get install mercurial hg clone https://gtfsdb.googlecode.com/hg/ gtfsdb sudo apt-get install python-setuptools sudo easy_install psycopg2 sudo apt-get install build-essential ubuntu@domU-12-31-39-00-5D-B8:/mnt/gtfsdb$ pwd /mnt/gtfsdb sudo python setup.py install sudo wget http://cdn.kelvinism.com/google_transit.zip sudo apt-get install python-psycopg2 EDIT 16-03-2025: I’ve since removed these files.

I’ve had several conversations with neighbors and co-workers about the “lack” of forward thinking, or at least the lack of forward action. Of course, I keep in the back of my mind that we aren’t “experts”, and the more I learn about transport the more I learn how complex it is. Dr. Sussman’s CLIOS process (Complex, Large- Scale, Integrated, Open Systems) appears more and more true the longer I work in and study transport. There is a plethora of excuses that can be made, but the general conclusion was that the earlier we prepare the better. I can remember working near Zhongshan 7-8 years ago and driving around on huge roads in the middle of empty fields. There …