Introduction
The Greater Kuala Lumpur Mobilities (GKLMOB) project is a multi-year research initiative examining how people move across the Greater Kuala Lumpur region, with a focus on public transport performance, accessibility, and user experience. The project integrates large-scale mobility data, administrative transport datasets, geospatial analysis, and qualitative interviews to build an evidence base for transport planning and policy reform.
A central component of GKLMOB is the analysis of bus system reliability and efficiency, including punctuality, headway regularity, and spatial coverage. This is complemented by qualitative interviews with public transport users to capture lived experiences of waiting times, comfort, safety, affordability, and convenience. Together, these quantitative and qualitative components aim to identify systemic barriers to mode shift and inform interventions to improve public transport outcomes.
Outputs from GKLMOB include datasets, technical notes, performance indices, policy briefs, and interactive data visualisations designed for policymakers, researchers, and the public.
Methodology
The dataset is constructed by integrating GTFS Static schedules with GTFS Realtime vehicle position feeds published by Rapid KL. GTFS Static data provides route, trip, and schedule definitions, while GTFS Realtime supplies high-frequency observations of bus locations and movement.
Vehicle position data are collected programmatically via the GTFS Realtime API. API calls are made every 15 seconds, on a daily collection window between 5:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m., capturing operational bus movements during active service hours. Each API response is timestamped upon retrieval and stored as an individual vehicle position observation.
Raw vehicle position records include vehicle identifiers, geographic coordinates, and movement attributes such as speed and bearing.Vehicle positions are matched to scheduled trips using trip identifiers from the GTFS Static feed.
The resulting dataset supports analysis of bus movement patterns, service regularity, headway variability, and temporal–spatial performance metrics. The dataset represents vehicle-level operational data only and does not include passenger boarding, alighting, or load information.
Caveats
Data collection is limited to the 5:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. window and does not capture late-night or early-morning services operating outside this period.
GTFS Realtime data availability is dependent on the upstream API provided by Rapid KL. There are periods where the API was temporarily unavailable or unresponsive, resulting in short-term gaps in data collection.
Changes to the structure or schema of the GTFS Realtime feed occurred during the collection period. These changes required updates to the data ingestion pipeline and may have introduced gaps in the dataset, typically spanning several hours or, in some cases, multiple days.
Data gaps are not systematically imputed. Users should account for periods of missing data when conducting temporal analyses or aggregating statistics over time.
Vehicle position data reflects reported GPS locations and may be affected by signal loss, reporting delays, or device-level inaccuracies.
The dataset contains vehicle-level operational data only and does not capture passenger boarding, alighting, or load factors.
Metadata
Datasets
Rapid KL Bus Positions
Dataset Name
vehicle_positions
Dataset Brief Description
This dataset is derived from the General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) Realtime feed for the Rapid KL bus service, obtained from Malaysia’s Official Open API. It contains raw GPS-based vehicle position records for Rapid KL buses operating on scheduled routes. Each row represents a single GPS ping from a bus at a specific timestamp, and each column is defined in the Columns section.
The dataset is updated monthly on YYYY/MM/DD and can be downloaded in Parquet format from the Download section.
Download Dataset
Rapid KL MRT Feeder Bus Positions
Dataset Name
vehicle_positions_feeder
Dataset Brief Description
This dataset is derived from the General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) Realtime feed for the Rapid KL MRT Feeder service, obtained from Malaysia’s Official Open API. It contains raw GPS-based vehicle position records for MRT Feeder buses operating on scheduled routes. Each row represents a single GPS ping from a bus at a specific timestamp, and each column is defined in the Columns section.
The dataset is updated monthly on YYYY/MM/DD and can be downloaded in Parquet format from the Download section.
Download Dataset
Credits
Author(s): Gregory Ho Wai Son, Kelvin Ling Shyan Seng
Team: Knowledge, Innovation & Data Hub (KID)
This page was prepared and maintained by the Knowledge, Innovation & Data Hub (KID) team at Khazanah Research Institute. The team is responsible for the structuring, documentation, and ongoing maintenance of the dataset.
