CalendarDate

Exceptions for the service IDs defined in the calendar.txt file. If calendar_dates.txt includes ALL dates of service, this file may be specified instead of calendar.txt.

The calendar_dates table allows you to explicitly activate or disable service IDs by date. You can use it in two ways.

• Recommended: Use calendar_dates.txt in conjunction with calendar.txt, where calendar_dates.txt defines any exceptions to the default service categories defined in the calendar.txt file. If your service is generally regular, with a few changes on explicit dates (for example, to accomodate special event services, or a school schedule), this is a good approach.

• Alternate: Omit calendar.txt, and include ALL dates of service in calendar_dates.txt. If your schedule varies most days of the month, or you want to programmatically output service dates without specifying a normal weekly schedule, this approach may be preferable.

Fields

service_id (required)

The service_id contains an ID that uniquely identifies a set of dates when a service exception is available for one or more routes. Each (service_id, date) pair can only appear once in calendar_dates.txt. If the a service_id value appears in both the calendar.txt and calendar_dates.txt files, the information in calendar_dates.txt modifies the service information specified in calendar.txt. This field is referenced by the trips.txt file.

date (required)

The date field specifies a particular date when service availability is different than the norm. You can use the exception_type field to indicate whether service is available on the specified date.

The date field’s value should be in YYYYMMDD format.

exception_type (required)

The exception_type indicates whether service is available on the date specified in the date field.

• 1: Indicates that service has been added for the specified date.
• 2: Indicates that service has been removed for the specified date.

For example, suppose a route has one set of trips available on holidays and another set of trips available on all other days. You could have one service_id that corresponds to the regular service schedule and another service_id that corresponds to the holiday schedule. For a particular holiday, you would use the calendar_dates.txt file to add the holiday to the holiday service_id and to remove the holiday from the regular service_id schedule.