SIRI Element to UI mappings

In the current OneBusAway (OBA) roadmap, we expect that the RESTful Mobile SIRI APIs (currently in use in OBA-NYC) will replace the existing "Real-time APIs" in the onebusaway-api-webapp project. However, the OBA "Discovery APIs" for static transit information (generated from a GTFS feed) will remain in use. Some of the existing OBA API's provide a mix of real-time and "discovery" information; these will be partially deprecated.

A full description of what fields will be kept and which fields will be discarded is discussed in the RESTful API Roadmap

This page discusses how the SIRI element fields, especially the MonitoredVehicleJourney element, will be mapped to human-readable UI fields. This is important to document so there is an understanding of data flow from OBA servers to mobile application, which can be implemented by separate parties.

We divide the SIRI fields into three categories:

1. Common fields - fields that appear in both distance and time-based SIRI user interfaces
2. Distance-based fields - fields that appear in distance-based SIRI deployments (e.g., "your bus is one stop away")
3. Time-based fields - fields that appear in time-based SIRI deployments (e.g., "your bus is 2 minutes and 30 seconds away")

It should be noted that an OBA server could generate both time and distance-based SIRI elements, in which case clients could show all 3 of the above categories of elements to end users.

As of September 2012, MTA's Bus Time system, based on OBA software, is the only production deployment of the OBA SIRI APIs. Currently, MTA's Bus Time system displays distance-based transit information rather than time-based information. As a result, we do not currently have a working implementation of a SIRI time-based interface to test against.

We use the format of:

Element.Field -> Description of field in user interface

For example:

• MonitoredVehicleJourney.PublishedLineName -> GTFS route_short_name. Per GTFS routes.txt spec, this should be "The route_short_name contains the short name of a route. This will often be a short, abstract identifier like '32', '100X', or 'Green' that riders use to identify a route, but which doesn't give any indication of what places the route serves."

Common fields

These fields are common to both Distance-based and Time-based SIRI deployments:

• MonitoredVehicleJourney.PublishedLineName -> GTFS route_short_name. Per GTFS routes.txt spec, this should be "The route_short_name contains the short name of a route. This will often be a short, abstract identifier like '32', '100X', or 'Green' that riders use to identify a route, but which doesn't give any indication of what places the route serves."

TODO - fill in these fields

Distance-based fields

These fields are specific to Distance-based SIRI deployments:

TODO - fill in these fields

Time-based fields

These fields are specific to Time-based SIRI deployments:

TODO - fill in these fields