Keep schedule and real time distinct
Static schedule data describes planned service, stops, trips, calendars, and shapes. Real-time feeds report updates, vehicle positions, and alerts against that baseline. Consumers need stable identifiers and a policy for missing or contradictory updates.
Validate units, coordinate ranges, timestamps, and references before publishing. A syntactically valid feed can still point riders to the wrong platform or day.
- Stable identifiers
- Service calendars
- Update timestamp
- Missing-data behavior
Design for the rider question
A rider needs to know what is expected, what changed, how current the information is, and what alternative exists. Expose freshness and uncertainty rather than presenting every prediction as exact.
Archive feed versions and validation results so agencies and consumers can reconstruct what was published during an incident.
Remove one real-time component and confirm the interface falls back to a clearly labeled schedule instead of presenting stale predictions as current.