Communication¶

What leaves the system: the information broadcast to passengers, the exchanges with drivers, and the standardised feeds consumed by third parties.

alerts¶

Alert — a passenger information message reporting a disruption: works, a detour, a stop not served, an exceptional event. The alert follows the structure of GTFS-RT service alerts: a header, a description, a cause, an effect, the periods concerned and the entities targeted — a route, a stop.

Identifier <alert_id>. An alert can be broadcast to passengers by push notification, and stay a draft until it is published.

An alert stored with an unreadable period — a date or a time that does not convert — is left out of the GTFS-RT feed entirely, rather than published without its period, which would make it permanently active. It can still be read and edited through the API, and the CSV export keeps it with blank dates.

messages¶

Message — an exchange between the operator and the drivers, or the other way round. Not to be confused with an alert, which addresses passengers: a message stays internal to the service.

Identifier <message_id>. A message has recipients, whose delivery state is tracked individually.

notifications¶

Notification — a push delivery to a recipient outside the application: SMS or mobile notification. Used in particular to relay an alert to subscribed passengers, or to reach a driver.

No identifier of its own exposed.

urgency¶

Urgency — an alarm triggered by the driver, from their device or from the distress pedal wired to an on-board equipment of the vehicle, reporting a situation requiring immediate intervention. It reports the vehicle's position and the context at the moment of triggering.

Identifier <urgency_id>. An urgency carries the emitting device, its position and its timestamp, and references the trip, the driver and the vehicle concerned when they are known. Its origin (source) tells an alarm raised from the driver app (driver_app) from one raised by an on-board equipment (onboard_equipment). Its lifecycle comprises an acknowledgement then a resolution, each traced with its author; a resolution may qualify the alarm as false.

voip¶

Telephony — the voice link between dispatch and the drivers, and the callback requests arising from it. It complements messaging when a written exchange is not enough.

Identifier <callback_id> for a callback request.

gtfs-rt¶

GTFS-RT — the standardised real-time feed describing the current state of the network: vehicle positions, trip delays, and disruptions. This is the format expected by journey planners and passenger information systems.

No identifier: the feed is requested by type.

The feed is the product of entities described elsewhere in this glossary: the schedule comes from GTFS, the positions from devices, the disruptions from alerts and trip updates.

siri¶

SIRI — the European standard for exchanging real-time data between transport systems. It covers the same need as GTFS-RT, with a different formalism, and is often required by transport authorities in Europe.

No identifier: the available services are discovered through the feed's capabilities.