Pagination of Free Bikes?

[black-tea]

Hi-

I wanted to get some clarification on the NABSA standard for the GBFS free bikes feed. In the City of Los Angeles, we are requiring that dockless mobility companies provide information on the status of available devices, adhering as best as possible to the NABSA guidelines. However, we've seen some providers implementing pagination of results.

I'm not sure what the historical scale of docked bikeshare has been, so this question is thinking a bit about how GBFS has operated in the past, but also how it should be thought about for the future in adapting it for dockless companies.

1. Does the omission of pagination on the output format section on the structure of the free_bikes feed mean that paginating results are not allowed?
2. It is reasonable to forbid paginating results, given the proliferation of dockless devices, and thus the high result count of any GET request?

We've been having this discussion within our own MDS here.

Thank you!

[fruminator]

At X number of dockless vehicles (X= 10K, for example) how many MB would the unpaginated response be before compression?

On Thu, Oct 18, 2018, 3:57 PM Tim Black notifications@github.com wrote:

Hi-

I wanted to get some clarification on the NABSA standard for the GBFS free bikes feed. In the City of Los Angeles, we are requiring that dockless mobility companies provide information on the status of available devices, adhering as best as possible to the NABSA guidelines. However, we've seen some providers implementing pagination of results.

I'm not sure what the historical scale of docked bikeshare has been, so this question is thinking a bit about how GBFS has operated in the past, but also how it should be thought about for the future in adapting it for dockless companies.

1. Does the omission of pagination on the output format https://github.com/NABSA/gbfs/blob/master/gbfs.md#output-format section on the structure of the free_bikes feed mean that paginating results are not allowed?
2. It is reasonable to forbid paginating results, given the proliferation of dockless devices, and thus the high result count of any GET request?

We've been having this discussion within our own MDS here https://github.com/CityOfLosAngeles/mobility-data-specification/issues/145 .

Thank you!

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[hunterowens]

For Metro Bikeshare, a 93 Station system, I simulated what a 10K bike system would be.

In [25]: len(data['data']['stations']) Out[25]: 93

` 2.4M Oct 18 15:52 mbs_10k_sample.json

21K Oct 18 15:53 station_status.json `

at 10K stations, GBFS feed would be 2.4 MB.

[fruminator]

Doesn't seem like much. After gzip?

On Thu, Oct 18, 2018, 6:54 PM Hunter Owens notifications@github.com wrote:

For Metro Bikeshare, a 93 Station system, I simulated what a 10K bike system would be.

In [25]: len(data['data']['stations']) Out[25]: 93

2.4M Oct 18 15:52 mbs_10k_sample.json 21K Oct 18 15:53 station_status.json

— You are receiving this because you commented. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/NABSA/gbfs/issues/112#issuecomment-431190681, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAJXEI-HnBT7ywtquCniMDwDcYIuy7w2ks5umQaggaJpZM4Xu4ms .

[heidiguenin]

Hey all! Now that we're actually moving toward a versioning scheme and then likely making use of it right away with #147, I'd like to suggest we bundle up a few other small breaking changes, including this one.

It seems like there's general consensus here that the clarification is worth making. @black-tea, want to open the PR?

[fruminator]

If you're proposing to build pagination in free_bikes, this still feels like unnecessary complexity, especially when the vehicles showing up on page 1 are not guaranteed to be consistent from 1 second to the next. think about this example:

at t=0, I call for page 1, which has bikes 1-1000 at t=0.5, bike 500 gets rented, so disappears from the feed at t=1, I call for page 2, which then starts with bike 1002, because 1001 would have moved onto page 1, because of bike 500 being rented.

On Fri, Nov 1, 2019 at 2:19 PM Heidi G notifications@github.com wrote:

Hey all! Now that we're actually moving toward a versioning scheme and then likely making use of it right away with #147 https://github.com/NABSA/gbfs/pull/147, I'd like to suggest we bundle up a few other small breaking changes, including this one.

It seems like there's general consensus here that the clarification is worth making. @black-tea https://github.com/black-tea, want to open the PR?

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-- Michael Frumin Science Lead for Bikes, Scooters, and Transit Science Site Lead for Lyft NYC 917.669.9070 [image: Lyft] http://www.lyft.com/

[heidiguenin]

It sounded to me like the general agreement was that we should revise GBFS to clarify that pagination of results is not allowed.

[fruminator]

ah, sorry, thanks!

On Fri, Nov 1, 2019 at 2:48 PM Heidi G notifications@github.com wrote:

It sounded to me like the general agreement was that we should revise GBFS to clarify that pagination of results is not allowed.

— You are receiving this because you commented. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/NABSA/gbfs/issues/112?email_source=notifications&email_token=AABFOEDW5F2257HCD6N3MPDQRR2YLA5CNFSM4F53RGWKYY3PNVWWK3TUL52HS4DFVREXG43VMVBW63LNMVXHJKTDN5WW2ZLOORPWSZGOEC32RWQ#issuecomment-548907226, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AABFOECM535JGHDQMDA6LLDQRR2YLANCNFSM4F53RGWA .

-- Michael Frumin Science Lead for Bikes, Scooters, and Transit Science Site Lead for Lyft NYC 917.669.9070 [image: Lyft] http://www.lyft.com/

[barbeau]

I would say that given the current GBFS Output Format docs, it's strongly implied that pagination already isn't supported. So if we add text to the spec to say that pagination is not allowed, I would call this a clarification and not a breaking change.

[heidiguenin]

@barbeau Agreed. I don't think we need to alter the spec, but it does answer the question hat @black-tea asked. Pagination isn't supported, so isn't allowed according to spec.

(cc @hunterowens )

I will close this issue in a few days.

[barbeau]

@heidiguenin I would suggest that we add a sentence to the spec explicitly saying that pagination isn't supported to avoid questions like this again in the future.

[heidiguenin]

@barbeau sounds good. We're working on editing the spec for consistency and other small editorial changes, and we'll wrap this into it.

@christrillium