General Bikeshare Feed Specification (GBFS)

Hi,

TfL are considering switching to GBFS format for Cycle Hire live data (e.g. number of bikes available, number of docks available etc.) in 2022.

Would this cause any issues?

We’d be able to share sample data well ahead of time, and could look at sharing a sample feed prior to launch if required, to make the switchover as seamless as possible.

Would really appreciate feedback from anyone currently using the Cycle Hire data in our BikePoint or Occupancy endpoints of the Unified API.

Thanks!

Joe

@jwithers

And yesterday my client asks me to add the live bike hire to the app!

Didn’t someone else post on there that was a bit of a problem with the cycle-hire data being very lump and inconstant? They were trying to grab the data feed every 5 minutes and they were getting inconsistent data?

Didn’t someone else post on there that was a bit of a problem with the cycle-hire

I think it was me.

We still have the same problem, we found a tricks to ignore invalid data but that create holes (sometime hours!)

1 Like

GBFS works well with MDS: GitHub - openmobilityfoundation/mobility-data-specification: A data standard to enable right-of-way regulation and two-way communication between mobility companies and local governments.

We’d very much appreciate switching to GBFS as a well-established standard. We’re aiming to include Cycle Hire bikes as an option for users of our Where To? app to navigate to their destination.

2 Likes

Welcome @futuretap

I’ve got a five-minute-cron consuming https://api.tfl.gov.uk/BikePoint (as well as https://mds.voiapp.io for non-London bike share schemes) and it seems to work very well.

** https://docs.voiscooters.com/maas-light/

Are you resharing this via GBFS? Or simply feeding your DB?

@futuretap It’s not being reshared at this time.