Investigate: Why are areas.txt errors blocking RT validation

[lauriemerrell]

See #902; we are getting errors about areas.txt blocking RT validation, which doesn't make much sense, because it's not a required file and doesn't interact with the RT data.

We want to:

• [x] Try to run the latest docker image of the mobility-data/gtfs-realtime-validator project and see if we can reproduce the MTC 511 error
• [x] If we can reproduce, submit an issue to the validator
• [x] ~If not, see if we need to update our validator version or similar~ N/A

• [x] Make a concrete plan for how we will address in our pipeline while we wait for a fix (consider suppressing areas.txt from being copied in our schedule feeds used for RT validation)

  Per Evan:

That's unfortunate that the whole RT validator bails on a field missing within areas.txt. That file shouldn't even be needed to analyze the GTFS-RT with its current spec. Maybe we should remove that file from the static feed before validating. Or maybe better yet, @lauriemerrell, can you try to run the latest docker image of the mobility-data/gtfs-realtime-validator project and see if you can reproduce the MTC 500 error? If you can, can you please submit an issue to that project?

Originally posted by @evansiroky in https://github.com/cal-itp/data-infra/issues/902#issuecomment-1036383033

[lauriemerrell]

On step 1, I get this -- "can't read content"

So, I cannot seem to run the validator in the docker image for the ITP ID 200 MTC feeds. I was able to run it successfully for Capitol Corridor (one of the MTC feeds, but which does not have areas.txt in its static feed).

There is no detailed error, but perhaps this is areas.txt blocking somehow before validation even begins...? There is no detailed error exposed in the UI.

The underlying issue with areas.txt seems to be that the areas.txt file for the MTC feed is missing the required wkt field.

cc @evansiroky -- do you think this is worth raising to the MobilityData folks?

[lauriemerrell]

Also, step 4 (address temporarily) was handled in #902 -- @atvaccaro is simply deleting areas.txt from the list of files copied over for RT validation.

[evansiroky]

cc @evansiroky -- do you think this is worth raising to the MobilityData folks?

@lauriemerrell Yes, definitely. Please create a bug report issue in https://github.com/MobilityData/gtfs-realtime-validator

[lauriemerrell]

Submitted as issue MobilityData/gtfs-realtime-validator/issues/92.

@evansiroky, do you think we should leave this issue open on our side...?

[evansiroky]

I'll go ahead and close. We can open another issue to update to the latest gtfs-rt-validator when a fix release has been published.