Helping San Francisco Bay Ferry adopt the Transit Operational Data Standard
San Francisco Bay Ferry became the first transit agency to use the Transit Operational Data Standard (TODS) in 2023. BlinkTag worked with the ferry operator, Cal-ITP, and Swiftly to make non-revenue vessel movements visible alongside passenger service.
“Not being able to track non-revenue trips represented a glaring omission in the operational data that our agency compiles and analyzes.”
Rider-facing GTFS data leaves out trips such as repositioning a vessel before its first passenger departure. We produced a TODS feed from the ferry’s scheduling software and added that information to the GTFS feed consumed by Swiftly.
With those trips included, the agency could compare scheduled and actual non-revenue movements and bring deadhead data into its reporting. Cal-ITP’s announcement credited BlinkTag as an implementation partner and described improvements to National Transit Database reporting.
Connecting scheduling data to operational reporting
Swiftly’s announcement documented its first consumption of TODS data through this implementation. The work shows how an emerging open standard can connect existing systems around an agency’s operational needs, rather than requiring a separate custom data format for each vendor.
