get_route_frequency: Get route frequency

In gtfstools: General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) Editing and Analysing Tools

Get route frequency

Description

Returns the number of departures and the mean headway of each specified route_id within a given time of day, by service_id (and by direction_id, if the field is present in the trips table).

Usage

get_route_frequency(gtfs, route_id = NULL, from, to)

Arguments

gtfs	A GTFS object, as created by read_gtfs().
route_id	A character vector including the route_ids to have their frequencies calculated. If NULL (the default), the function calculates the frequency of every route_id in the GTFS. route_ids not listed in trips are ignored, with a warning.
from	A string. The starting point of the time of day, in the "HH:MM:SS" format.
to	A string. The ending point of the time of day, in the "HH:MM:SS" format. Must be later than from.

Value

A data.table with the columns route_id, direction_id (only if present in the trips table), service_id, departures (the number of departures within the time of day, including each departure generated from the frequencies table) and mean_headway (the mean headway within the time of day, in minutes). Routes with no departures within the time of day are not included.

Details

Each departure of a trip is counted once, however many stops it visits within the time of day (unlike get_stop_frequency() and tidytransit::get_route_frequency(), which count stop departures). Scheduled trips depart at their earliest departure_time in stop_times (blank times are ignored); trips without any departure time are not counted. Trips listed in frequencies depart every headway_secs from start_time until (but not including) end_time, as in frequencies_to_stop_times(), even if they are not listed in stop_times; their stop_times entries are templates and are not used. An error is raised if frequencies has invalid entries for the specified routes.

A departure is counted when it happens at or after from and before to (unlike in filter_by_time_of_day(), which also keeps entries at to). Departures after midnight are listed with times past "24:00:00", so use a time of day such as "24:00:00"-"26:00:00" to count them.

The mean headway is the length of the time of day divided by the number of departures, so it overstates the actual headway when service starts or ends within the time of day. Without a direction_id field in trips, the departures of both directions are pooled; trips with an NA direction_id are grouped together.

Examples

data_path <- system.file("extdata/spo_gtfs.zip", package = "gtfstools")

gtfs <- read_gtfs(data_path)

route_frequency <- get_route_frequency(
  gtfs,
  from = "07:00:00",
  to = "09:00:00"
)
head(route_frequency)

route_ids <- c("CPTM L07", "2002-10")
route_frequency <- get_route_frequency(
  gtfs,
  route_id = route_ids,
  from = "07:00:00",
  to = "09:00:00"
)
route_frequency

gtfstools documentation built on Oct. 28, 2026, 5:13 p.m.