HSL provides GTFS-RT feeds for service alerts, trip updates and vehicle positions that complement the static GTFS data.

Note that if you are not using the static GTFS package, you most likely want to use Digitransit APIs which provide the same data in a more ready-to-use format.

Endpoints

The API supports only GET requests to these endpoints. There is are no parameters for filtering data etc.

Data type	Endpoint
Service alerts	https://realtime.hsl.fi/realtime/service-alerts/v2/hsl
Trip updates	https://realtime.hsl.fi/realtime/trip-updates/v2/hsl
Vehicle positions	https://realtime.hsl.fi/realtime/vehicle-positions/v2/hsl

Update intervals

GTFS-RT feeds are updated with the following intervals:

Data type	Update interval
Service alerts	5 minutes and when new alerts are published
Trip updates	15 seconds
Vehicle positions	1 second

Data format

The feeds are using version 2.0 of GTFS-RT specification. See Google's documentation for more details about GTFS-RT format.

The feeds should conform to the GTFS-RT specification, but there are some HSL-specific implementation details that could be useful to know.

Trip updates

• Trip IDs are not available

  • Combination of route_id, start_date, start_time and direction_id should be used to uniquely identify trips
  • This is because trip IDs in the static GTFS feed are not stable and will change when the static feed is regenerated
• uncertainty is set to 0 for stops which the vehicle has passed

Vehicle positions

• Trip IDs are not available (explained in previous section)
• schedule_relationship is either SCHEDULED (default) or ADDED (used for buses when there is more than one bus serving the same trip)

• occupancy_status is only available for vehicles that have passenger counting available

  • NOT_ACCEPTING_PASSENGERS is never used as a value

• current_status depends on whether the vehicle has HFP events available

  • If the vehicle has events: IN_TRANSIT_TO when vehicle is traveling to the next stop, INCOMING_AT when the vehicle has entered the stop radius (i.e. after DUE event), STOPPED_AT when the vehicle has stopped to the stop (i.e. after ARS event)
  • If the vehicle does not have events: only IN_TRANSIT_TO and STOPPED_AT are used. STOPPED_AT is used when the corresponding HFP message contains stop ID, e.g. when the vehicle is close to the stop

• Vehicle id is in format <operator_id>/<vehicle_id>

  • Operators are listed in the HFP documentation

Service alerts

• Each informed_entity contains a single agency_id, route_id or stop_id

  • agency_id is always HSL and is present when the alert affects all HSL traffic