Load TransitLand data to DuckDB

Transitland is a platform providing access to transit data via REST, GraphQL, and routing APIs. Everything needed to build a working TransitLand → DuckDB pipeline is on this page: the API's base URL, authentication, endpoints, pagination and incremental field — plus a prompt that hands the whole job to your coding agent.

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Build your TransitLand to DuckDB pipeline

Paste this prompt into Claude, Codex, or Cursor. The agent does the rest.

PromptCopy prompt
Run uvx dlthub-init@latest to build a pipeline from TransitLand to DuckDB and run it on dltHub

That scaffolds a dltHub workspace and installs the dltHub AI harness — the project rules, the secrets-management skill, and the dlt MCP server your agent needs to work safely. From there it reads the TransitLand API, proposes the endpoints to load, then writes, runs and validates the pipeline while you review rather than type. Credentials are inspected through MCP tools, so your agent never reads secrets.toml itself. How the LLM-native workflow works →

Prefer to write it yourself? Every fact the agent uses is below.

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TransitLand API at a glance

These values come from the TransitLand API reference — the authoritative source if anything here looks out of date.

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How do I authenticate with the TransitLand API?

Transitland APIs require an API key passed either as a query parameter (e.g., ?apikey=...) or as an HTTP header (e.g., 'apikey: ...'). Transitland does not use an Authorization header.

1. Get your credentials

1. Navigate to the Interline sign-up page (https://app.interline.io/products/tlv2_api/orders/new). 2. Choose your preferred plan (Free, Professional, or Enterprise). 3. Complete the order process. If you already have an Interline account (e.g., from using OSM Extracts), sign in. 4. Once your subscription is confirmed, sign in to your Interline account dashboard to retrieve your API key. If you are a new user, you may need to set an initial password via the 'Forgot password?' link if you have not established one yet.

2. Add them to .dlt/secrets.toml

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[sources.transitland_source]
transitland_api_key = "your_api_key_here"

dlt reads this file automatically at runtime. With the harness, the setup-secrets skill prompts you for the values and never handles the raw credential in chat. For production, see setting up credentials with dlt.

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What TransitLand data can I load into DuckDB?

These are the TransitLand endpoints dlt can load into DuckDB:

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How do I load only new TransitLand records?

TransitLand exposes offset on api/v2/rest/routes, so dlt can request only the records that changed since the last run. Set it as the cursor_path and dlt tracks the high-water mark for you between runs.

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{"name": "routes", "endpoint": {
    "path": "api/v2/rest/routes",
    "incremental": {"cursor_path": "offset", "initial_value": "2024-01-01T00:00:00Z"},
}}

On the first run dlt loads everything from initial_value; on every run after that it requests only what changed and appends with write_disposition="merge" if you set a primary key. See incremental loading.

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What does the generated TransitLand pipeline look like?

A standard dlt REST API pipeline — the same code you would write by hand, loading feeds and routing/valhalla from the TransitLand API into DuckDB:

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import dlt
from dlt.sources.rest_api import RESTAPIConfig, rest_api_resources

@dlt.source
def transitland_source(apikey=dlt.secrets.value):
    config: RESTAPIConfig = {
        "client": {
            "base_url": "https://transit.land/api/v2/rest/",
            "auth": {"type": "api_key", "api_key": apikey, "name": "apikey"},
        },
        "resources": [
            {"name": "routes", "endpoint": {"path": "api/v2/rest/routes"}},
            {"name": "feeds", "endpoint": {"path": "api/v2/rest/feeds"}}
        ],
    }
    yield from rest_api_resources(config)


def load_transitland_to_duckdb() -> None:
    pipeline = dlt.pipeline(
        pipeline_name="transitland_pipeline",
        destination="duckdb",
        dataset_name="transitland_data",
    )
    load_info = pipeline.run(transitland_source())
    print(load_info)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    load_transitland_to_duckdb()

Run it with python transitland_pipeline.py. The agent iterates on this until it loads cleanly — you review and approve, rather than write it from scratch.

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How do I query TransitLand data in DuckDB?

dlt creates one table per resource. Query the loaded data with Python or SQL — or ask your agent to, through the MCP server's execute_sql_query tool.

Python (pandas DataFrame):

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import dlt

data = dlt.pipeline("transitland_pipeline").dataset()
df = data.routes.df()
print(df.head())

SQL:

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SELECT * FROM transitland_data.routes LIMIT 10;

See querying your data with dataset and exploring it in marimo notebooks.

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How do I deploy the TransitLand to DuckDB pipeline in production?

The pipeline runs locally, which is ideal for prototyping and one-off analysis. When you need it on a schedule, monitored on every load, and shared with your team, deploy the same dlt code on the dltHub platform — no infrastructure to maintain. The prompt above already ends with "run it on dltHub", so your agent can take it there directly.

• Deploy & schedule — run the pipeline as a managed job with automatic retries.
• Monitor — observable job queues, alerting, and load metrics for every run.
• Transform — promote raw TransitLand loads into governed, documented models.
• Visualize & share — explore data in notebooks and publish live dashboards instead of static screenshots.

Book a demo →

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What other destinations can I load TransitLand data to?

dlt loads into any of these — only the destination argument changes:

Set dlt.pipeline(destination="snowflake") and add credentials in .dlt/secrets.toml. On the dltHub platform the same pipeline runs against a managed Iceberg lakehouse. See the full destinations list.

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Next steps

• Ready for production? Book a demo of the dltHub platform →
• dlt LLM-native workflow docs
• REST API source reference
• Join the dlt community on Slack