Command line

Installing the package provides the gtfs-rt-kit command (also available as python -m gtfs_rt_kit). Reading URLs needs the http extra.

gtfs-rt-kit vehicles     SOURCE [--route R] [--static GTFS_ZIP] [--warsaw] [--json]
gtfs-rt-kit trip-updates SOURCE [--route R] [--static GTFS_ZIP] [--json]
gtfs-rt-kit alerts       SOURCE [--route R] [--lang pl] [--active | --at ISO_TIME] [--json]

SOURCE is an http(s):// URL, a path to a .pb file, or - for standard input. Every command also accepts --timeout SECONDS (default 10) and --retries N (default 2).

Examples

$ gtfs-rt-kit vehicles https://mkuran.pl/gtfs/warsaw/vehicles.pb --warsaw --route N91
VEHICLE    LINE  TRIP                         LAT       LON       TIMESTAMP
V/N91/187  N91   2026-10-09:N91:PtS:187:2453  52.28374  20.90525  2026-10-09T23:13:02Z
V/N91/188  N91   2026-10-09:N91:PtS:188:2515  52.22932  21.00283  2026-10-09T23:13:04Z
2 vehicle(s), feed time 2026-10-09T23:13:14Z

# JSON for scripts (jq, pandas, ...)
gtfs-rt-kit vehicles https://example.org/vehicle_positions.pb --route 15 --json

# Delays against the timetable
gtfs-rt-kit trip-updates https://example.org/trip_updates.pb --static gtfs.zip

# Alerts in Polish that are active right now
gtfs-rt-kit alerts https://mkuran.pl/gtfs/warsaw/alerts.pb --lang pl --active

# Saved snapshots work too
curl -s https://example.org/alerts.pb | gtfs-rt-kit alerts -

With --static, vehicles are matched to routes (so --route also accepts short names and the output includes the transport mode and headsign) and trip updates gain per-stop delays. The exit code is 1 when a feed cannot be fetched or decoded and 2 for invalid arguments.