Publish Service Alerts about Closed or Modified Stops

Use Transit to let riders know about changes to their stop! Assigning an alert to a specific stop makes it easy for you to share information about service changes such as closed, moved, or modified stops. Stop-based alerts show up on the route map in Transit, so riders can easily see if their stop is affected. Best of all, when a stop is closed, riders are automatically routed around it with Transit's trip planner.

About Stop-Based Alerts

On Transit’s home screen, a small triangular symbol next to a line indicates an active alert, either for the entire line or for a stop in the direction that line is traveling. To view the alert, tap the line, then tap the Service Alerts banner.

In the Route Detail screen, yellow or red circles on the route map highlight stops with live alerts. A yellow circle indicates that the stop has been moved or modified, and a red circle indicates that the stop is closed.

To view alerts for the stop, tap the stop on the map, then tap the popup and select View Alerts.

Stops marked as closed are not displayed in the list of nearby transport options, and are not considered by the trip planner. Riders are automatically redirected to the nearest available stop.

Publish Stop-Based Alerts via your GTFS-rt Feed or Another API

GTFS-rt

The GTFS-rt data format already supports stop-based alerts. Simply indicate the affected stop_id in the "informed_entity" field.

To mark a stop as closed, indicate "effect: NO_SERVICE".

Caution: If you select "No Service" for a stop, Transit will hide the stop. It will not be considered by the trip planner, and the list of nearby transit options will show the next closest stop. Ensure you have selected the correct stop.

Other APIs

Transit supports stop-based alerts from other APIs, but we cannot guarantee that they will work as smoothly as GTFS-rt. If your stop-based alerts are not displaying correctly in Transit, please contact us at data@transitapp.com so we can help you out.

Publish Stop-Based Alerts with the Transit Dashboard

The dashboard is available to Transit Partners.

Learn more about becoming a partner.

Transit Partners can publish service alerts, including stop-based alerts, with the Transit Dashboard. Read a general how-to guide about sending alerts with the dashboard here: Send Alerts with the Transit Dashboard, and read on for details about how to add stop-based alerts with the Transit Dashboard.

Specify Affected Stops and/or Lines

When adding an alert with the Transit Dashboard, you can specify:

the affected line(s), or
the affected stop(s), or
an affected stop and an affected line.

Once you have selected a line, the Affected Stops field will offer only stops on that line.

Here's an example to explain how the stops and lines work together:

In Montreal, Lionel-Groulx is an interchange station for the Orange and Green metro lines.

An alert on the Orange line will be displayed at all stops on the Orange line prior to Lionel-Groulx.
An alert on the Lionel-Groulx stop will be displayed for all metro lines that stop at Lionel-Groulx.
An alert on the Lionel-Groulx stop with the Orange line specification will only affect the Orange line departures from Lionel-Groulx.

Indicate a Closed Stop

To mark a stop as closed, choose "No Service" from the "Effect" drop-down menu.

Best Practices for Stop-Based Alerts

If an alert affects all stops on a line, use a line-based alert instead of a stop-based alert. Do not apply the alert to every stop of the line.
Service alerts should contain information about transit service specific to the affected line or stop only. Please, no advertisements for unrelated events, promotions of other apps, etc.
Clickable links and formatting (bold, italic, etc) are not supported.
Use line breaks to make your service alert easier to read.
While there is no character limit for service alerts, users will be viewing alerts on mobile devices. Please be concise.

Get Help

If your data includes stop-based alerts but Transit isn't displaying them correctly, please contact us at data@transitapp.com so we can help you out!

To help us help you, please include a specific example of an alert that's giving you trouble.