I do see some isolated improvements whenever I travel to Germany (mostly to Frankfurt, but what is pain other than Frankfurt am Main), but yeah I sympathize here, and do hope the pushes toward better systems continue
I remember how the "live map" for public transport in Berlin was actually a map with where the transport should be, not where it actually was. At least that was the case a couple of years ago with VBB =)
* For companies publishing real time positions (STIB-MIVB, TEC), live position will be shown. For companies that don't (De Lijn, NMBS/SNBC), we calculate the position based on the schedule (GTFS), corrected with published delays (GTFS-RT).
Every vehicle on the map is labeled with realtime / calculated position.
When you hover over a dot you can see whether it's the real position or whether the position is computed from the timetable with delay applied. The transparent yellow dots are computed, the opaque yellow dots are real position. Same for transparent vs opaque gray and orange dots; the blue dots all appear to be computed (makes sense, the NMBS doesn't provide real-time info about where trains are as far as I know).
I've first seen this in Moscow around 2018 (in Google Maps) and then in Ivano-Frankovsk in 2021 (some local custom app). I think such live maps are the best use of public funds one could imagine.
I dunno, I think there's one better use and that's funding a federated framework for this so any transport network can just plug into the system as a source and any client can plug in as a consumer.
Well, there is this: https://mobilitydatabase.org/ which sounds about what you're looking for, although it is still up to the client to combine the feeds its looking for.
Awesome! Looking at the metro stop near me here in Brussels, the trains seemed stuck for a while at the station. Not impossible this was just real :) Great way to admire the density and connectivity of our public transport!!
This is well made, would love to have this in my own country as I can never trust the actual timers on the bus stops.
How do you get access to the data? Is it a public government API? How did you manage to map all the routes too?
There are a bunch of different protocols used to exchange scheduled and live transit information out there. And there are also a lot of different companies actually operating the vehicles (Transport Authorities). Sometimes several within one large city. But even if they have different systems underneath often they expose one of the popular protocols. Often there are even rules/law about certain protocols that you HAVE to support.
In USA that is mostly GTFS and GFTS-RT. I dod not think its a law but something about what you have to do to get funds maybe? I'm in Europe so my memory is foggy.
In EU I believe its NeTEx and SIRI. And every member nation needs a national hub where all transport authorities shares its data openly.
GTFS + GTFS-RT is very popular among consumer apps since its both pretty simple and pull-based. Static data is in CSV-files in a ZIP-file and the realtime data comes via Protobuf. If you check sources on the page this post is about you will se many GTFS sources. Ofc even transit systems built for the european standards can expose GTFS via a translation layer to support a broader range of consumers easily.
When it comes to signs at bus-stops there are those that are fed with this kind of data and can show both timetable data and realtime data based on the vehicles position. Here those signs are everywhere (Sweden) and I know there are plenty in the rest of Europe aswell. Outside of that I don't know if they are used as much.
There's a "sources" button at the bottom left that seems to appear at certain zoom levels.
> "vlive is an independent app and not an official app of any government, public authority or transport operator. It is not affiliated with, nor does it represent, NMBS/SNCB, De Lijn, STIB-MIVB or TEC. All data comes from their open data; where it matters, the official sources below are authoritative."
Fascinating... I have a thing with maps. Does the information come from a central server that runs some open-source protocol for public transport, or is this gathered from different endpoints in different formats?
I just figured out that on Mallorca, the busses are shown like that on Google Maps. Which to me was mind blowing. I had never seen it, it's so convenient.
Similar real time traffic map for Switzerland <https://maps.trafimage.ch/ch.sbb.netzkarte?baselayers=ch.sbb...>
Pittsburgh!
https://truetime.rideprt.org/map
For Deutsche Bahn it will be just a photo....
I do see some isolated improvements whenever I travel to Germany (mostly to Frankfurt, but what is pain other than Frankfurt am Main), but yeah I sympathize here, and do hope the pushes toward better systems continue
I remember how the "live map" for public transport in Berlin was actually a map with where the transport should be, not where it actually was. At least that was the case a couple of years ago with VBB =)
This also doesn’t seem to move, despite the numerous AI CSS slop badges
See https://zbiorkom.live/cities for a live public transport in several cities in Poland.
Similar map for the Netherlands: http://ovzoeker.nl/
same thing with global data (but of course not full coverage everywhere): https://travic.app
Would be perfect post end of January for next FOSDEM.
For Tokyo, https://minitokyo3d.com/ is just based on a static GTFS file. Or is it realtime? Nobody knows the difference.
(I'm joking. Local trains in Tokyo area are late quite often. Doesn't matter much when there's one every <5 minutes though.)
feel like its computed from the time table and not live or am I mistaken?
It depends.
From: https://openbaarvervoerbelgie.be/over-ons/
* For companies publishing real time positions (STIB-MIVB, TEC), live position will be shown. For companies that don't (De Lijn, NMBS/SNBC), we calculate the position based on the schedule (GTFS), corrected with published delays (GTFS-RT).
Every vehicle on the map is labeled with realtime / calculated position.
When you hover over a dot you can see whether it's the real position or whether the position is computed from the timetable with delay applied. The transparent yellow dots are computed, the opaque yellow dots are real position. Same for transparent vs opaque gray and orange dots; the blue dots all appear to be computed (makes sense, the NMBS doesn't provide real-time info about where trains are as far as I know).
For most of them it says "real position" and some show a delay.
I've first seen this in Moscow around 2018 (in Google Maps) and then in Ivano-Frankovsk in 2021 (some local custom app). I think such live maps are the best use of public funds one could imagine.
I dunno, I think there's one better use and that's funding a federated framework for this so any transport network can just plug into the system as a source and any client can plug in as a consumer.
Well, there is this: https://mobilitydatabase.org/ which sounds about what you're looking for, although it is still up to the client to combine the feeds its looking for.
Awesome! Looking at the metro stop near me here in Brussels, the trains seemed stuck for a while at the station. Not impossible this was just real :) Great way to admire the density and connectivity of our public transport!!
This is well made, would love to have this in my own country as I can never trust the actual timers on the bus stops. How do you get access to the data? Is it a public government API? How did you manage to map all the routes too?
What country are you in?
There are a bunch of different protocols used to exchange scheduled and live transit information out there. And there are also a lot of different companies actually operating the vehicles (Transport Authorities). Sometimes several within one large city. But even if they have different systems underneath often they expose one of the popular protocols. Often there are even rules/law about certain protocols that you HAVE to support.
In USA that is mostly GTFS and GFTS-RT. I dod not think its a law but something about what you have to do to get funds maybe? I'm in Europe so my memory is foggy.
In EU I believe its NeTEx and SIRI. And every member nation needs a national hub where all transport authorities shares its data openly.
GTFS + GTFS-RT is very popular among consumer apps since its both pretty simple and pull-based. Static data is in CSV-files in a ZIP-file and the realtime data comes via Protobuf. If you check sources on the page this post is about you will se many GTFS sources. Ofc even transit systems built for the european standards can expose GTFS via a translation layer to support a broader range of consumers easily.
When it comes to signs at bus-stops there are those that are fed with this kind of data and can show both timetable data and realtime data based on the vehicles position. Here those signs are everywhere (Sweden) and I know there are plenty in the rest of Europe aswell. Outside of that I don't know if they are used as much.
There's a "sources" button at the bottom left that seems to appear at certain zoom levels.
> "vlive is an independent app and not an official app of any government, public authority or transport operator. It is not affiliated with, nor does it represent, NMBS/SNCB, De Lijn, STIB-MIVB or TEC. All data comes from their open data; where it matters, the official sources below are authoritative."
Fascinating... I have a thing with maps. Does the information come from a central server that runs some open-source protocol for public transport, or is this gathered from different endpoints in different formats?
Great companion to https://irail.be, a minimalist counterpart to this site, also based on open data.
I just figured out that on Mallorca, the busses are shown like that on Google Maps. Which to me was mind blowing. I had never seen it, it's so convenient.
Really nice! The place names are a little hard to read especially in dark mode, other than that great job! Thanks for sharing!
That’s because dark mode itself is hard to read. Use normal mode like god intended your eyes will thank you.
In the netherlands we have 9292 which imo is the most mature implementation.
Soon we'll be needing a live map of all the live maps in the world.
Wow very useful thank you !