About Data Validation

In accordance with National Transit Data (NTD) reporting requirements, the integrity of all APC ridership data must be maintained.

Irregular or inconsistent data are therefore either “thrown out” during data validation or processed by the cleaning algorithm. Data that is “thrown out” during validation is kept in a hold database for review by an administrator.

APC Gateway works with the key assumption that the count system has the most current list of stops for each trip and that it correctly associates stop event information with the correct stop ID. The advantage of APC Gateway is that it removes dependency on the stop sequence of the data. The data validation algorithm can extract stop data in any sequence, validate the data elements, and format them for loading into the Trapeze database.

Whether through a real time data exchange form or a passive file import, APC Gateway receives third party data in the form of an XML message. Each message from a count system contains ridership count and arrival/departure time information associated with a specific stop ID and trip ID on a specific date.