gtfs-cli

CLI tool to fetch, process, and explore GTFS transit data — both realtime (GTFS-RT) and static schedules. Follows Unix philosophy: each command does one thing and writes to stdout, composing naturally with tools like curl, unzip, and jq.

Note: gtfs-cli is in active development. All 0.x.x releases are subject to breaking changes.

Goal

To become a Swiss Army knife CLI for working with public transit open data — GTFS static schedules, GTFS-RT real-time feeds, bike share data, and more.

Installation

uv tool install gtfs-cli

After installation, the gtfs-cli command is available globally.

Commands

static info

Inspect a static GTFS feed (a folder of .txt files). Shows agency, valid dates, feed age, stop/route/trip counts, route types, service days, and file inventory.

# Download and unzip a feed, then inspect it
curl -L "https://ckan0.cf.opendata.inter.prod-toronto.ca/dataset/7795b45e-e65a-4465-81fc-c36b9dfff169/resource/cfb6b2b8-6191-41e3-bda1-b175c51148cb/download/TTC%20Routes%20and%20Schedules%20Data.zip" -o ttc.zip
unzip ttc.zip -d ttc/
gtfs-cli static info ttc/

# Inspect the current directory
gtfs-cli static info

Example output:

  Agency  TTC
Timezone  America/Toronto
Language  en
   Valid  2026-05-03 → 2026-06-06  (34 days)
Feed age  9 days · expires in 25 days

     Stops  9,378
    Routes  232
     Trips  134,882
Stop times  4,261,259
    Shapes  434,460 points across 1,550 shapes

Route types
  Bus                210
  Tram / Light Rail   19
  Subway / Metro       3

Service days
  Mon  Tue  Wed  Thu  Fri  Sat  Sun

Files
  Required  agency  stops  routes  trips  stop_times  calendar
  Optional  shapes  calendar_dates
  Missing   feed_info  frequencies  transfers  fare_attributes  fare_rules

Largest files
  stop_times.txt  203 MB  4,261,259 rows
  shapes.txt       18 MB    434,460 rows
  trips.txt        12 MB    134,882 rows

For all available options, run:

gtfs-cli static info --help

fetch

Fetch a GTFS-RT feed from a URL or local file and output it as JSON.

Example output:

{
  "header": {
    "gtfs_realtime_version": "2.0",
    "incrementality": "FULL_DATASET",
    "timestamp": "1778642963"
  },
  "entity": [
    {
      "id": "1",
      "trip_update": {
        "trip": {
          "trip_id": "39051020",
          "route_id": "73",
          "schedule_relationship": "SCHEDULED"
        },
        "stop_time_update": [
          {
            "stop_sequence": 31,
            "arrival": { "time": "1778642961" },
            "stop_id": "1732",
            "schedule_relationship": "SCHEDULED"
          }
        ]
      }
    }
  ]
}

# Fetch live trip updates
gtfs-cli fetch "https://gtfsrt.ttc.ca/trips/update?format=binary"

# Fetch vehicle positions
gtfs-cli fetch "https://gtfsrt.ttc.ca/vehicles/position?format=binary"

# Fetch service alerts
gtfs-cli fetch "https://gtfsrt.ttc.ca/alerts/all?format=binary"

# Inspect a previously saved .pb file
gtfs-cli fetch trips.pb

Filtering with jq:

# List all active alerts
gtfs-cli fetch "https://gtfsrt.ttc.ca/alerts/all?format=binary" | jq '.entity[] | .alert'

# Count entities in a feed
gtfs-cli fetch "https://gtfsrt.ttc.ca/trips/update?format=binary" | jq '.entity | length'

# Extract all trip IDs
gtfs-cli fetch "https://gtfsrt.ttc.ca/trips/update?format=binary" \
  | jq '[.entity[].trip_update.trip.trip_id]'

Watch mode — continuously poll a feed and stream NDJSON (one JSON object per line):

# Poll every 30 seconds
gtfs-cli fetch --watch 30 "https://gtfsrt.ttc.ca/trips/update?format=binary"

# Count entities on each snapshot
gtfs-cli fetch --watch 30 "https://gtfsrt.ttc.ca/trips/update?format=binary" \
  | jq --unbuffered '.entity | length'

# Save a long-running collection to a file
gtfs-cli fetch --watch 30 "https://gtfsrt.ttc.ca/trips/update?format=binary" \
  >> snapshots.ndjson

Watch mode handles transient failures gracefully: HTTP and network errors are retried with exponential backoff (1s → 2s → 4s … capped at 60s). Stop with Ctrl+C or SIGTERM.

For all available options, run:

gtfs-cli fetch --help

Development

# Install dependencies
uv sync

# Run a command
uv run gtfs-cli fetch "https://gtfsrt.ttc.ca/trips/update?format=binary"

# Run tests
uv run pytest tests/ -v