Issue getting GTFS-rt integration to work with Septa/Philadelphia public transit

Question

Issue getting GTFS-rt integration to work with Septa/Philadelphia public transit

Opened this issue 5 months ago · 1 comments

Hello Mark and company, I have been trying for the past day to get the gtfs-rt integration working for my local bus in Philadelphia. Bear with me because I am quite sure I am going to get something wrong in this post. I have reviewed the issues on this page and none seem to be the same as the one I am having. Here is what I have added to the sensor list in my configuration.yaml:

- platform: gtfs_rt
    trip_update_url: 'https://www3.septa.org/api/TransitView/index.php'
    departures:
    - name: 11th Street Bus Headed North
      route: '45'
      stopid: '16832'
      directionid: 'Northbound'
      icon: mdi:bus
      service_type: 'bus'

I can't seem to get any sensor to populate into my home assistant using this code. I tried to use the test.py script to troubleshoot but couldn't figure out how to use it.

As far as I can tell, there is no API key needed to access the Septa gtfs-rt data. The only thing I can tell that is different is that "route" from the integration is "route_id" in the Septa data, "stopid" is "next_stop_id", etc. This is where I really reveal my novice-ness. I don't know how to get the integration to realize the the "route" data it is looking for is named "route_id" in the data set.

Here is the SEPTA page that lists the api info:
Septa API info

Any suggestions on what I can do to get this working? Sorry to bother.

Thanks.

Answer 1 · 2024-05-17T20:05:30.000Z

Here is an adjusted configuration. This one is closer but it still does not work. I had to google the gtfs-rt trip update and vehicle position urls which are different from the SEPTA API.

trip_update_url: 'https://www3.septa.org/gtfsrt/septa-pa-us/Trip/rtTripUpdates.pb'
vehicle_position_url: 'https://www3.septa.org/gtfsrt/septa-pa-us/Vehicle/rtVehiclePosition.pb'
departures:
- name: '11th Street Bus Headed North'
  route: '45'
  stopid: '16832'
  directionid: '0'
  # directionid: '1'

Note: Direction 0 and 1 show up in the real time data below, I'm not sure which one corresponds to Northbound

This is the data received from SEPTA gtfs-rt:

DEBUG:sensor:      Stop:  Stop Sequence: 52 Stop Time: 0
DEBUG:sensor:   Received Trip ID 733142 Route ID: 45 direction ID 0 Start Time:  Start Date: 
DEBUG:sensor:   Feed Route ID 45 changed to 45
DEBUG:sensor:      Stop:  Stop Sequence: 7 Stop Time: 0
DEBUG:sensor:   Received Trip ID 733259 Route ID: 45 direction ID 1 Start Time:  Start Date: 
DEBUG:sensor:   Feed Route ID 45 changed to 45
DEBUG:sensor:      Stop:  Stop Sequence: 1 Stop Time: 0
DEBUG:sensor:   Received Trip ID 733262 Route ID: 45 direction ID 1 Start Time:  Start Date: 
DEBUG:sensor:   Feed Route ID 45 changed to 45
DEBUG:sensor:      Stop:  Stop Sequence: 17 Stop Time: 0
DEBUG:sensor:   Received Trip ID 733263 Route ID: 45 direction ID 1 Start Time:  Start Date: 
DEBUG:sensor:   Feed Route ID 45 changed to 45
DEBUG:sensor:      Stop:  Stop Sequence: 34 Stop Time: 0
DEBUG:sensor:   Received Trip ID 733147 Route ID: 45 direction ID 0 Start Time:  Start Date: 
DEBUG:sensor:   Feed Route ID 45 changed to 45
DEBUG:sensor:      Stop:  Stop Sequence: 4 Stop Time: 0
DEBUG:sensor:   Received Trip ID 733261 Route ID: 45 direction ID 1 Start Time:  Start Date:

Now compare to the data I receive from MARTA:

DEBUG:sensor:   Received Trip ID 9095658 Route ID: 21619 direction ID 0 Start Time: 16:20:00 Start Date: 20240517
DEBUG:sensor:   Feed Route ID 21619 changed to 21619
DEBUG:sensor:      Stop: 81900 Stop Sequence: 1 Stop Time: 1715977364
DEBUG:sensor:      Stop: 99972388 Stop Sequence: 2 Stop Time: 1715977425
DEBUG:sensor:      Stop: 81028 Stop Sequence: 3 Stop Time: 1715977462
DEBUG:sensor:      Stop: 82030 Stop Sequence: 4 Stop Time: 1715977497
DEBUG:sensor:      Stop: 82032 Stop Sequence: 5 Stop Time: 1715977540
DEBUG:sensor:      Stop: 82034 Stop Sequence: 6 Stop Time: 1715977573
DEBUG:sensor:      Stop: 82036 Stop Sequence: 7 Stop Time: 1715977633
DEBUG:sensor:      Stop: 82038 Stop Sequence: 8 Stop Time: 1715977710
DEBUG:sensor:      Stop: 82040 Stop Sequence: 9 Stop Time: 1715977740
DEBUG:sensor:      Stop: 82042 Stop Sequence: 10 Stop Time: 1715977769
DEBUG:sensor:      Stop: 82044 Stop Sequence: 11 Stop Time: 1715977800
DEBUG:sensor:      Stop: 82046 Stop Sequence: 12 Stop Time: 1715977830
DEBUG:sensor:      Stop: 82048 Stop Sequence: 13 Stop Time: 1715977889
DEBUG:sensor:      Stop: 83036 Stop Sequence: 14 Stop Time: 1715977938
DEBUG:sensor:      Stop: 83042 Stop Sequence: 15 Stop Time: 1715978018
DEBUG:sensor:      Stop: 83045 Stop Sequence: 16 Stop Time: 1715978106
DEBUG:sensor:      Stop: 83056 Stop Sequence: 17 Stop Time: 1715978221
DEBUG:sensor:      Stop: 84142 Stop Sequence: 18 Stop Time: 1715978312
DEBUG:sensor:      Stop: 84146 Stop Sequence: 19 Stop Time: 1715978350
DEBUG:sensor:      Stop: 84167 Stop Sequence: 20 Stop Time: 1715978397
DEBUG:sensor:      Stop: 84162 Stop Sequence: 21 Stop Time: 1715978464
DEBUG:sensor:      Stop: 84179 Stop Sequence: 22 Stop Time: 1715978516
DEBUG:sensor:      Stop: 84172 Stop Sequence: 23 Stop Time: 1715978554
DEBUG:sensor:      Stop: 84174 Stop Sequence: 24 Stop Time: 1715978583
DEBUG:sensor:      Stop: 99973371 Stop Sequence: 25 Stop Time: 1715978615
DEBUG:sensor:      Stop: 99973368 Stop Sequence: 26 Stop Time: 1715978646
DEBUG:sensor:      Stop: 99973366 Stop Sequence: 27 Stop Time: 1715978704
DEBUG:sensor:      Stop: 84902 Stop Sequence: 28 Stop Time: 1715978740

There are more upcoming stops associated with a trip ID. The Stop time field is populated for each stop in the sequence. In the SEPTA data, all stop times are 0 which can't be right. There is also only one upcoming stop per trip ID.

I'm not sure where to troubleshoot from here. It could be something wrong with SEPTA's gtfs-rt feed, or something wrong with how this integration is taking in that feed.