GTFS feed audit for Schedule and Realtime feeds before a public deadline.

A feed audit is a short, evidence-backed review.

A GTFS feed audit is useful before a board update, vendor handoff, Schedule publication, rider-facing incident review, or procurement checkpoint. The point is to collect enough public evidence to decide what should be fixed next.

mobility.rest starts with public feed URLs and a narrow question. The audit does not claim certification, legal compliance, or permanent health. It describes what was observed during the scan window.

Schedule feed audit checks.

• Run or review canonical GTFS Schedule validation output and separate errors, warnings, and operational risks.
• Check feed horizon, current and upcoming service coverage, and whether expiration risk should be raised before the next publication.
• Compare route, trip, stop, calendar, accessibility, and identifier changes against prior baseline when one is available.
• Identify fields that matter for rider-facing output, such as missing accessibility data, unusable stop references, or trip volume shifts.

The GTFS Schedule Reference describes the dataset structure and notes that published datasets should cover current and upcoming service. A good audit translates that into deadline risk, not only file-format observations.

Realtime feed audit checks.

• Probe public Trip Updates, Vehicle Positions, and Service Alerts endpoints over the observation window.
• Record response status, parseability, FeedHeader timestamp age, entity timestamp age, and stale or missing entity patterns.
• Measure Schedule-to-Realtime coverage using a stated denominator so teams can debate the number instead of the wording.
• Flag time-of-day regressions that a one-time validator run cannot see.

The audit should leave a practical remediation path.

The final report should show scope, evidence rows, prioritized findings, suspected owner, limits, and next actions. That is what makes it useful for agency staff, vendors, consultants, and regional program teams.

See the sample 24-hour scan report for the reporting structure. All sample report data is fictional; real customer reports remain private unless approval is given.

GTFS feed audit FAQ.

How is this different from a validator report?

A validator report is an input. The audit adds time-window observation, Schedule-to-Realtime joins, impact framing, and remediation next actions.

Can the audit cover only GTFS Schedule?

Yes. Scope can be limited to Schedule when Realtime is not part of the operational question.

Does a clean audit guarantee future reliability?

No. A fixed audit describes the scan window. Continuous monitoring is the better fit for ongoing regression detection.