A Support Tool for Converting Community Bus Operation Data to GTFS Format

GTFS (General Transit Feed Specification) is a widely adopted open-source format for sharing transit schedules and route information. However, in Japan, the implementation of GTFS has been limited, especially among bus operators in local governments, due to a lack of electronic data and technical expertise. To address this issue, this paper reports on the development of a GTFS creation support tool that assist with the conversion of community bus operation data into the GTFS format. We defined our own intermediate data format and implemented a Visual Studio Code extension that converts the data to the GTFS format. In particular, we studied and implemented an efficient way to generate a large amount of data related to operation schedules and routes. As a result, we were able to provide a simple and efficient method for creating and updating GTFS data.