The Challenge: Doing More with Less
Most transit agencies don’t suffer from a lack of data; they suffer from a lack of resources. At the same time, GIS teams are being asked to deliver more: more updates, more accuracy, and more transparency for the riding public.
Too often, that pressure lands on a GIS Analyst who spends hours unzipping files, manually joining tables, and re-publishing layers, work that should never require a human in the loop. At Spatialty, we’ve solved this problem before at the highest scales, and we can solve it for you too.
Introducing GTFS-To-GIS
GTFS-To-GIS is an automation workflow built on a Spatialty-designed FME workbench. It ingests your raw GTFS data and publishes it directly to your ArcGIS platform, handling even the largest datasets with zero manual intervention once deployed.
What used to take hours of careful, error-prone manual work becomes a seamless background process your team never has to think about. The pipeline handles the full lifecycle of your transit data:
- Direct Publishing: Pushes finalized, cleaned data to your destination of choice, ensuring your maps are always up to date.
- Automated Extraction: Reaches into the GTFS zip file and unpacks every individual text file automatically.
- Logic Mapping: Navigates the complexities of GTFS, linking stops to patterns and trips to physical route shapes.
- Spatial Transformation: Converts raw tabular coordinates into high-performance spatial features.
Choose Your Deployment
No two transit agencies have the same infrastructure. That’s why we offer three deployment tiers, each built on the same proven automation engine and customized to fit your environment.
Tier 1 — GTFS-To-AGO (ArcGIS Online)
Best for cloud-first agencies and public-facing maps
Designed for rapid public sharing, this version pushes map-ready transit layers directly to your ArcGIS Online organization, bypassing on-premise complexity entirely. It’s the ideal foundation for powering public-facing web maps, rider-facing applications, and real-time service alerts. As with every Spatialty deployment, it’s built around your agency’s standards, not a generic template.
Tier 2 — GTFS-To-File GDB
Best for desktop analysis and cartographic production
Designed for planning teams that live in ArcGIS Pro, this version automates the creation of a local File Geodatabase. It’s perfect for agencies that need high-quality cartographic output and offline planning capability without the overhead of an enterprise server.
GTFS-To-eGDB (Enterprise Geodatabase)
Best for enterprise agencies requiring a single source of truth
Our most robust deployment, designed for deep infrastructure integration. This isn’t just a data transfer, it’s a sophisticated build that leverages the full power of your Enterprise Geodatabase:
- Relational Logic: Relationship Classes link routes to stops and trips to shapes, preserving data integrity across your schema.
- Data Standards: Geodatabase Domains and Subtypes enforce strict attribute validation at the database level.
- Rich Metadata: Attachment support allows photos and documents to be linked directly to spatial features.
- Query-Ready: Optimized for Custom Query Layers and SQL-based reporting across your organization.
Built on Standards. Customized for You.
No two transit agencies are identical. Regardless of which deployment tier you choose, Spatialty works directly with your team to tailor the workflow to your specific environment:
- Custom Schema Mapping — Every attribute, from route colors to stop IDs, is mapped to match your agency’s existing GIS standards and database requirements.
- Embedded Validation — Quality checks are built into the workflow to catch data errors — missing stop coordinates, orphaned route shapes, malformed geometries — before they ever reach a public-facing map.
- Targeted Publishing — Output is tuned to fit your infrastructure, whether that’s ArcGIS Online, a local geodatabase, or a full Enterprise SDE environment.
Why Automate with Spatialty?
Stop Making Your Analysts Data Janitors
Your GIS team was hired to do meaningful work — ridership analysis, transit equity planning, network optimization. Automating the repetitive cycle of unzipping, joining, and re-publishing GTFS feeds gives them that time back.
Catch Errors Before They Go Public
Manual updates are prone to human error. Our workbenches include validation logic that catches data inconsistencies before they ever reach your riders or your stakeholders.
A Foundation That Grows With You
GTFS automation is the starting point, not the ceiling. Once your core pipeline is in place, Spatialty can extend it to bring in additional data streams:
- Asset Management: Sync bus shelter and signage data from SQL databases.
- Real-Time Data: Stream live vehicle locations via GTFS-RT and other APIs.
- Ridership Reporting: Automatically spatialize APC (Automatic Passenger Counter) data for analysis-ready outputs.
Once your core automation engine is in place, every new data stream becomes easier to add, building toward a fully integrated transit GIS platform rather than a collection of one-off fixes.
The Spatialty Advantage
We don’t just configure software; we bring the expertise to make it work for your agency. We understand transit data logic, ArcGIS architecture, geospatial automation, and the unique pressure of a service change cycle. That combination is what separates a working automation from one that gets abandoned after the first edge case.
Ready to Reclaim Your Team’s Time?
Let’s talk about what your current GTFS workflow looks like and where automation can make the biggest immediate impact.
Schedule a Free 30-Minute Discovery Call
