Add feeds from DigitalTransportForAfrica

[1Maxnet1]

The website has feeds for a lot of countries that we currently do not cover at all

https://digitaltransport4africa.org/projects/

https://gitlab.com/digitaltransport/data

[Altonss]

Unfortunately, a lot of this data seems outdated

[derhuerst]

I'll tag some people involved in the data collection repositories here, maybe they know more about the current state.

@rabira-hierpa @nlehuby @johanricher
Unfortunately, I couldn't find out if Agraw Ali Beshir has a GitHub account.

[derhuerst]

related feed about the Addis Adaba feed: osm-ToniE/gtfs-feeds#31

[johanricher]

I was involved in the creation of Digital Transport for Africa as a registry of GTFS datasets on Gitlab (mainly collected through companies contracting with the World Bank or WRI but not used to open their data), but not anymore. At some point the datasets were integrated into the Navitia API and TransportR, it would be great to have them in Transitous for the same purpose!

I agree those datasets are outdated, but extending the end dates would probably be good enough since those networks don't really change over time. Data wrong in some places is still better than no data at all IMHO.

Btw the map has not been updated since 2023 (source data here) but I think some datasets were uploaded on Gitlab since then.

Agraw Ali is still the key contact I think, the official email address on the website is info@digitaltransport4africa.org .

[felixguendling]

Data wrong in some places is still better than no data at all IMHO.

If those two options exist, there are cases where it's better to have wrong data and other cases where it's better to have no data at all I would guess.

But I always thought that Transitous has the goal to involve the local tech / open data / transport communities or even employees from the agencies. I think there's not much value in just throwing a dataset into MOTIS and then having someone from Germany be the maintainer of those datasets. This person would (1) not be able to verify anything about the data (2) probably never "dogfood" the routing results. So in my opinion, both options (having no data or outdated data) would be inferior to the actual idea of Transitous: to have local experts help maintain the data. So maybe there is a way to get in touch with the local agencies and/or local tech (open source / open data) community if they would be interested in joining Transitous as a maintainer team. Those people would also be capable of verifying data quality and would actually benefit from using the routing service (e.g. they could build official/unofficial apps or use existing apps on a daily basis).

[rabira-hierpa]

Hi @derhuerst

Me and Agraw were recently involved in producing an accessibility analysis for the public transport systems that run through the selected cities listed on the Digital Transport 4 Africa GitLab. I have sent him this link to take a look.

Regarding the current status, most of the GTFS datasets were updated in 2020 except for some cities. We tried to put the release date on the ReadMe files of each city folder. Let me know if you need further details about the dataset.

On a side note, I like what you're doing and would like to contribute.

[1Maxnet1]

Regarding the current status, most of the GTFS datasets were updated in 2020 except for some cities. We tried to put the release date on the ReadMe files of each city folder. Let me know if you need further details about the dataset.

As mentioned by felix, it would be nice, if someone who actually knows and could use the dataset, takes care of it.

On a side note, I like what you're doing and would like to contribute.

Great! I think a good start would be to check and update one of the datasets in you home area and if it is updated add it to transitous as described here: https://transitous.org/doc/#adding-a-region If you need any assistance feel free to ask: https://transitous.org/doc/#contact

[rabira-hierpa]

@1Maxnet1 I saw that my region Addis Ababa has been added. What other issues should I look into that would help me understand the project better?

[1Maxnet1]

@1Maxnet1 I saw that my region Addis Ababa has been added. What other issues should I look into that would help me understand the project better?

You could add yourself as a maintainer of the feed, so you get automatically pinged in case there is an issue detected. This ensure that the feeds keep working over time. To understand the project better have a look at the documentation https://transitous.org/doc/ If any questions come up, feel free to ask. Maybe check if your current app can already make use of transitous here https://transitous.org/ or how to add support to it https://transitous.org/api/

But I guess it would be good to continue the conversation in the chat room, to not clutter the issue too much :)