By email
Shed 39, 2 Fryatt Quay
Pipitea, Wellington 6011
PO Box 11646
28 February 2020
Manners Street
Wellington 6142
T 04 384 5708
File Ref: OIAP-7-13919
F 04 385 6960
www.gw.govt.nz
Michael Fincham
[FYI request #12166 email]
Dear Mr Fincham
Request for information 2020-015
I refer to your request for information dated 5 February 2020, which was received by Greater
Wellington Regional Council (GWRC) via the FYI website on 5 February 2020. You have requested
the following information:
“I am seeking a copy of the last 12 months of raw data showing the dates and times at which
buses travelling on the number 13 route from Brandon Street to Mairangi arrived at (or
departed from) their first scheduled stop, which is stop 5520. If this information is
unavailable due to limitations of GW's bus tracking system then I would like the data
pertaining to the arrival of these buses at the second stop in their journey, which is stop
5012.
As much as possible the data should not be summarised, processed or modified in any way. I
am a computer scientist and for my purposes would like access to the raw data.
As there have been approximately 250 working days in the last 12 months, and there are five
scheduled number 13 services per day, the data should constitute a table of approximately
1250 rows. If 12 months of this data isn't held by Metlink then I would like the maximum
number of data points of this type which are held for this service, and an explanation of any
specific retention times that are applied to this data collection.
Any reasonable text-oriented format for the data is fine - an SQL dump or CSV file would be
ideal. Any reasonable time format is fine, e.g. UNIX timestamps, ISO8601 etc
Even just a list of the "start timestamps" when buses clocked in to the number 13 route would
be fine, for instance data that looked like this:
Wed Feb 5 16:18:24 NZDT 2020
RESPONSE TO OIA 2020-015 MICHAEL FINCHAM
Wed Feb 5 16:40:55 NZDT 2020
Wed Feb 5 17:03:31 NZDT 2020
Would be great. There should be approximately five data points for every date included in
the dataset, representing each of the five departures on that day. Further metadata such as a
unique per-trip identifier, or what the 'lateness value' of the bus was at that particular point
would be appreciated but is not necessary - I should be able to match up which departures
correspond to which scheduled trip myself if necessary.
If this specific data is already published or made available through a public API then
information on where to obtain it myself would be appreciated.”
GWRC’s response follows:
Route 13 departure times
Route 13 afternoon departure times from origin stop 5520/ between 5 February 2019 - 5 February
2020 are provided in Excel format as
Attachment 1 to this response.
Please note that only trips where there is an RTI record, or where a trip was cancelled in the RTI
system by the operator, have been included. Other trips missing from the data may have also run, but
failed to provide an RTI record - for example, if equipment failed, or an operator logged onto an
incorrect trip. Such trips would count as having ‘Failed’ their performance measures from a
contracting standpoint.
Additional route 13 service performance information
Overall route 13 service performance, as measured weekly against key performance indicators
punctuality (percentage of departures from origin stop leaving between one minute early and five
minutes late) and
reliability (percentage of services that ran), is publicly available in the ‘Bus
performance data’ section of https://www.metlink.org.nz/our-metlink-bus-journey/performance-of-
our-network/#DataAndReports . This data series commences from 16 July 2018 (the first weekday
commencement date of the new Wellington City bus network).
Future Metlink API
Please note that GWRC are currently developing an open data portal, making static and real-time
General transit feed specification (GTFS) data formally available via API, for public release by June
2020. This will provide supported open access to GTFS data.
RESPONSE TO OIA 2020-015 MICHAEL FINCHAM
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If you have any concerns with the decision(s) referred to in this letter, you have the right to request
an investigation and review by the Ombudsman under section 27(3) of the Local Government
Official Information and Meetings Act 1987.
Yours sincerely
Greg Pollock
General Manager, Public Transport
RESPONSE TO OIA 2020-015 MICHAEL FINCHAM
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