Realtime Transit provides live transit information and updates to Google Maps and Google Maps for mobile users. These updates include the latest departure and arrival times and service alerts.
To provide this information, transit agencies build a data feed of their updates and share it with Google. Complementing a widely-used format called General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS), the Realtime feed format uses data from a Google tool called Protocol Buffers. These Realtime feeds are automatically fetched by Google or pushed by the agency when something changes. Feed updates are immediately processed as Realtime Transit Updates so that users get on-time transit information.
Learn more about GTFS, Realtime feeds, or Google's Protocol Buffers.
Benefits
Adding a Realtime feed to complement your existing static feed enhances users’ experiences with your transit services. For example, users get:
- Up-to-date arrival and departure time info. This allows users to plan their trips even more efficiently.
- Advance notification of service delays. This helps reduce inconvenience to transit users.
- Smoother transit experiences. The better and easier the transit experience, the more likely users will return.
Get started
In order to publish a Realtime feed, you need a working GTFS static transit information feed in Google Maps (either live or in preview). Learn more about setting up a GTFS feed.
Once you have your static feed and server space for your Realtime data, you can publish your Realtime feed.
Follow these steps to publish your Realtime feed.
For developer resources, review these GTFS-Realtime specifications.