TransXChange - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

TransXChange is a UK national XML based data standard for the interchange of bus route and timetable information between bus operators, the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency

Vehicle and Operator Services Agency

Vehicle and Operator Services Agency is a non-departmental public body granted Trading Fund status in the United Kingdom sponsored by the Department for Transport of the United Kingdom Government.-History:...

, local authorities and passenger transport executive

Passenger Transport Executive

In the United Kingdom, passenger transport executives are local government bodies which are responsible for public transport within large urban areas...

s, and others involved in the provision of passenger information

Passenger information

Passenger information is information provided to public transport users about the nature and state of a public transport service, though visual, voice or touchable media...

.

The format is a UK national de facto standard sponsored by the UK Department of Transport

Department of Transport

Department of Transport may refer to:* The Irish government department, see Department of Transport * The UK government department formerly known as the Department of Transport, see Department for Transport...

. The standard is part of a family of coherent transport related XML

XML

Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....

standards that follow UK GovTalk

GovTalk

GovTalk is a UK government initiative sponsored by the Cabinet Office, designed to encourage efficient government through the use of the internet and other modern electronic technologies...

guidelines and are based on the CEN

European Committee for Standardization

The European Committee for Standardization or Comité Européen de Normalisation , is a non-profit organisation whose mission is to foster the European economy in global trading, the welfare of European citizens and the environment by providing an efficient infrastructure to interested parties for...

Transmodel

Transmodel is the CEN European Reference Data Model for Public Transport Information; it provides an abstract model of common public transport concepts and data structures that can be used to build many different kinds of public transport information system, including for timetabling, fares,...

conceptual model.

Although TransXChange is currently used mainly to exchange bus timetables, its may also be used for schedules for rail and other modes.

History

TransXChange is intended as a successor to the widely used ATCO-CIF format for bus timetables and was developed as a modernised representation of ATCO-CIF content, using an XML representation based on the Transmodel

Transmodel

Reference model for Public Transport.

Version 1.0 versions of TransXchange were developed in 2000-2001 and used in pilot projects.
Version 2.0 of the TransXChange standard s released in April 2005. 2.1 was a major rewrite to meet additional requirements and harmonsie with eGOV standards. It introduced a modular structure of packages inpartiuclar to use the UK NaPTAN
NaPTAN
The National Public Transport Access Node database is a UK nationwide system for uniquely identifying all the points of access to public transport in the UK...

and National Public Transport Gazetteer
National Public Transport Gazetteer
The National Public Transport Gazetteer provides a topographic database of towns and settlements in the UK; it provides a common frame of reference for the National Public Transport Access Nodes schema and other UK Public Transport Information schemas such as JourneyWeb...

or NPTG standard to define the names and location of stops.
Version 2.1 was released in February 2006 http://www.transxchange.org.uk/schemaDoc2_0.htm and is now supported by most UK suppliers of Public Transport Scheduling software. Version 2.1 has now been adopted as the baseline standard for Electronic Bus Service Registration conducted by the UK Vehicle and Operator Services Agency
Vehicle and Operator Services Agency
Vehicle and Operator Services Agency is a non-departmental public body granted Trading Fund status in the United Kingdom sponsored by the Department for Transport of the United Kingdom Government.-History:...

(VOSA), and as the general standard to which all related developments are expected to comply. 2.1 was accompanied by an enhanced TransXChange Publisher tool which can plot a bus route on a map.
In 2007 an open source tool known as TransXChange2GoogleTransit http://code.google.com/p/googletransitdatafeed/ to output a TransXChange schedule in General Transit Feed Specification
General Transit Feed Specification
The General Transit Feed Specification defines a common format for public transportation schedules and associated geographic information....

(GTFS), the format used by Google Transit, was released.
Version 2.2 with minor modifications is being planned and is likely to appear in 2008.

TransXChange is supported by all main UK suppliers of bus timetable systems and has also been used to exchange data for metro and other modes.

Scope

TransXChange provides a rich model based representation of a bus timetable that can be used for a wide variety of purposes. TransXChange documents can be used to exchange the following information:

Bus schedules including stops, routes, departures times/frequencies, operational notes, and maps. Routes may have complex topologies such as circular routes, cloverleaf and lollipops, and complex workings such as short working and express patterns. Connections with other services can also be described;

The days on which the services run, including availability on public holidays and other exceptions;

Term times and holidays of Schools, Local Educational Authorities and other organisations serviced by a bus service;

Details of the Statutory Registration of the Service with a Traffic Area Office, including any Short Notice Registration details;

Information about the Bus Operators providing the service;

Additional operational information, including fare stages, positioning runs, garages, layovers, duty crews, useful for Automatic Vehicle Location
Automatic vehicle location
Automatic vehicle location is a means for automatically determining the geographic location of a vehicle and transmitting the information to a requester....

or AVL and on-board ticketing systems.

TransXChange Schemas

TransXChange comprises:

Two XML schemas: There are two almost identical schemas, with differences only as to the constraints on mandatory elements:

A Registration schema, intended for Electronic Bus Service Registration, in which registration details are mandatory.
A General Purpose Schema for which registration details are optional.
- A user guide, describing the TransXChange model including UML diagrams and descriptions of all the elements and attributes.
- A set of example documents illustrating the use of TransXChange features.
- A TransXChange Publisher tool.
- A Web site http://www.transxchange.org.uk with FAQs downloads, etc.

Each version of TransXChange is versioned in line with UK GovTalk

GovTalk

GovTalk is a UK government initiative sponsored by the Cabinet Office, designed to encourage efficient government through the use of the internet and other modern electronic technologies...

guidelines.

TransXChange Publisher

TransXChange is accompanied by a free tool,the TransXChange Publisher, which renders a TransXChange document into a human readable format, matrix and route map. PDF and html formats are supported.

Future development

Addition modules are envisaged to cover ticketing and fares through the proposed FareXChange standard. TransXChange can also be used for other modes of transport

Mode of transport

Mode of transport is a term used to distinguish substantially different ways to perform transport. The most dominant modes of transport are aviation, land transport, which includes rail, road and off-road transport, and ship transport...

- it is already used for metro and tram systems, route and timetable data.

External links

http://www.transxchange.org.uk TransXChange Website
http://www.naptan.org.uk NaPTAN Website
http://www.dft.gov.uk UK Department for Transport
http://www.vosa.gov.uk VOSA Website