This is a thing that makes working with TransXChange data slightly less awful. It's in use "in production" on bustimes.org, so it's "battle-tested", but lacking in documentation and not published on PyPI yet.

It uses xml.etree.ElementTree.iterparse, which I found helped with parsing large files without using too much memory.

It has no dependencies, noGDAL, so in theory it can run in the browser using Pyodide.

It doesn't implement the whole of the TransXChange standard, but attempts to handle all of the data available in Great Britain. On bustimes.org, I use it with data from:

• Transport for London (https://tfl.gov.uk/tfl/syndication/feeds/journey-planner-timetables.zip)
• the Traveline National Dataset
• the Bus Open Data Service
• Stagecoach
• Passenger
• Transport for Greater Manchester

Usage

import txc

document = txc.TransXChange("54.xml")

# draw the rest of the owl

You might not need this

Think carefully whether you need to parse TransXChange data at all. GTFS (General Transit Feed Specification) is simpler, and is used all around the world. The Bus Open Data Service offers timetable data in GTFS format, converted from TransXChange, for the whole of Great Britain or just the regions you're interested in:

• https://data.bus-data.dft.gov.uk/timetable/download/gtfs-file/all/
  • 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 https://data.bus-data.dft.gov.uk/timetable/download/gtfs-file/england/
    • https://data.bus-data.dft.gov.uk/timetable/download/gtfs-file/east_anglia/
    • https://data.bus-data.dft.gov.uk/timetable/download/gtfs-file/east_midlands/
    • https://data.bus-data.dft.gov.uk/timetable/download/gtfs-file/east_anglia/
    • https://data.bus-data.dft.gov.uk/timetable/download/gtfs-file/london/
    • https://data.bus-data.dft.gov.uk/timetable/download/gtfs-file/north_east/
    • https://data.bus-data.dft.gov.uk/timetable/download/gtfs-file/north_west/
    • https://data.bus-data.dft.gov.uk/timetable/download/gtfs-file/south_east/
    • https://data.bus-data.dft.gov.uk/timetable/download/gtfs-file/south_west/
  • 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 https://data.bus-data.dft.gov.uk/timetable/download/gtfs-file/scotland/
  • 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 https://data.bus-data.dft.gov.uk/timetable/download/gtfs-file/wales/

The National Data Library has an archive of the above. And its international use means there are plenty of great tools for working with GTFS data – I like GTFS Kit.

If you've thought about it and still want to use TransXChange, there may be better parsers available, such as pytxc. Or you could use the XML schema (http://www.transxchange.org.uk/schema/2.4/TransXChange_general.xsd), maybe with xmlschema.

Future ideas

• Add type annotations
• Support creating and modifying TransXChange files, not just reading them