According to the spec:
At least one of route_short_name or route_long_name must be specified, or potentially both if
appropriate. If the route does not have a short name, please specify a route_long_name and use an
empty string as the value for this field.
The current validation on a Route requires both short_name and long_name and so those missing one of the values will be excluded from the data returned.
https://developers.google.com/transit/gtfs/reference#routes_fields