Enriching our station data in GTFS

Station entrances and platform numbers are now included on Google Maps trip plans for the subway. (Image Credit: Google)

We’re proud to announce some major enhancements to our station data with the launch of entrances, station addresses, platforms, levels, pathways, and more precise stop locations in GTFS. These features will enable our team and other developers to deliver more accurate travel times for trips, easier wayfinding, and real-time accessible trip planning.

GTFS is the industry-standard feed for transportation schedule data, allowing us to share it with developers no matter how many transit agencies they work with. It’s a common language for agencies to use when talking about their systems.

With our latest May 15 release, our station data in GTFS now includes:

• Entrance locations for all stations on the Red Line, Blue Line, Orange Line, Green Line “trunk” and Reservoir branch, and Mattapan Trolley
• More precise stop locations for the Green Line and Mattapan Trolley, as well as bus stops that are part of subway stations (e.g. Harvard Station busways)
• Street addresses for all subway and Commuter Rail stations
• Platform names/numbers and floor levels for all subway stations and busways in those stations
• Simple pathways information for about 75% of subway stations

Google Maps already displays some of these fields. If you’d like to see what it looks like, check out our engineer Josh Fabian’s MBTA Station Viewer.

How do you map a subway station with data?

Last summer, we embarked on a project to improve the way we model MBTA stations. We wanted our riders’ digital interactions with our infrastructure to more closely resemble what they experience in the real world.

(Left) Google Maps view of Downtown Crossing Station before May 15. (Right) Google Maps view of Downtown Crossing Station after May 15. Note the blue station entrance markers. (Image: Google Maps)

To gather all of this information, especially for entrances, platforms, vertical levels, and pathways, we conducted a massive physical survey of our subway stations. It took more than 2 months to complete. Our surveyors noted locations of entrances, labels of exits, labels of platforms, and information about travel paths, including distances between different points in and around stations, times required to use elevators and escalators, and accessibility information.

We’ve spent the past few months cleaning and structuring that data for use in GTFS.

Developers can use these new fields for a variety of enhancements to their products, such as:

• Improving wayfinding for trip plans by showing names and locations of station entrances, as well as platform names and numbers
• Displaying more details on maps, like separate entrance locations (and their accessibility), platforms, and bus stops
• Providing more robust station guides for users
• Delivering more accurate travel times for trips by incorporating pathways information and varying the time for accessible trips
• Detailing which facilities are or are not serviced by a particular entrance (for instance, fare vending machines)

What’s next?

We’re still in the process of enhancing this data and fleshing out facilities for all of our stations.

Information about fare vending machines is on deck and should be available within a couple weeks. Over the next few months, we’ll add the remaining simplified pathways data to fill out the subway system. And after that, we’ll add elevators and escalators to pathways. By the end of the year, we should have enough data for the subway system to provide:

• Real-time trip accessibility: Once our elevator and escalator data is complete, applications will be able to use pathways combined with elevator/escalator statuses to help users plan reliably accessible trips in real time.
• More accurate trip times: With pathways data, trip planners will be able to calculate travel times with more precision, especially when a trip involves a transfer at one of our more complicated stations, like Park Street.
• More sophisticated station models: Eventually we will be able to show much more detailed pictures of stations, visually or otherwise, so people can know what to expect when they ride the subway.

Projects like these enable our team and our private-sector partners to deliver more information, faster to MBTA riders. Want to help us make Bostonians’ commutes better? We’re hiring! Check out our open positions on Lever.