Sri Lanka Railways:
GTFS Data Standardization Engine
Bridging the gap between paper timetables and modern mobile transit maps. Discover, search, and map Sri Lanka's rail schedules using global open-data standards.
What is GTFS & Why Does It Matter?
The General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) is a standardized format used globally by public transit agencies. It packages station locations, route geometries, pricing matrices, and departure timetables into a single structured format that integrations like Google Maps, Apple Maps, and Citymapper consume automatically.
Sri Lanka Railways is currently hindered by a significant digital gap. Commuters rely on offline timetables, unofficial blogs, or physical boards. By adopting the GTFS platform created here, SLR can instantly push its entire network into global mapping systems.
Adopting GTFS enables:
- Instant Route Maps: Integration with Google/Apple Maps for effortless trip planning.
- Real-time Delay Updates: Publishing dispatcher station reports instantly to passenger apps.
- Open Data Ecosystem: Fostering local app developers to create customized commuter products.
The Current Transit Sector Gaps
No Live Position Feeds
Locomotives lack onboard telemetry. Drivers frequently oppose hardware GPS trackers. Station dispatchers need a manual backup portal to report delays.
Disconnected Shape Files
Traditional feeds lack physical coordinate paths (`shapes.txt`). Passengers see straight lines crossing oceans instead of matching actual train track beds.
Opaque Ticket Fares
Ticket costs remain locked inside hard-to-parse official PDFs. There is no simple API for third-party fare calculation.
Platform Architectural Strengths
Drizzle Query Speed
Replacing heavy configurations with raw TypeScript bindings. Drizzle ORM ensures millisecond responses on complex multi-hop transfer queries.
High-Res Map Shapes
We parsed 15,058 OpenStreetMap coordinates starting at Colombo Fort to align GTFS shapes with true physical tracks.
Cloudflare CDN Pipeline
Static feeds rebuild nightly via cron and offload database queries to public Cloudflare R2 CDN buckets.