Research Request - Route identification over time

[tiffanychu90]

Complete the below when receiving a research request, and continue to add to this issue as you receive additional details and produce deliverables. Be sure to also add the appropriate project-level label to this issue (eg gtfs-rt, DLA).

Research Question

Single sentence description: We want to identify the same route over time, despite small changes in route_id, route_long_name, route_short_name, and route_description.

• First noticed this in scheduled service hours with speeds for each month #806, and now this is something we want to address before doing more time-series work in schedule or RT

Detailed description: Using GTFS schedule routes, we have route_id, route_long_name, route_short_name, and route_description. Once we started aggregating for the month, and even across months, route_id in itself is not that stable (if suffixes change).

How will this research be used?

• We want some logic implemented to identify similar enough characteristics across the 4 route columns to know that they are indeed the same route.
• Update this function in portfolio_utils and rt_utils later

Data sources

• Cal-ITP data sources:
• Either cached trips data that is already downloaded or mart_gtfs.dim_routes and just grab it all at once
• Start with {COMPILED_CACHED_VIEWS}trips_{analysis_date}.parquet and concatenate a couple days from shared_utils.rt_dates together

Deliverables:

Notebook, and/or script or function