A non-live map for trains in Tokyo

https://greggman.github.io/tokyo-trains

I think the live map is cool but (1) I don't know where to get that data and (2) seeing things at 100x speed is, IMO, more interesting as a visual

It's based off schedules but only Toei's schedules are easy to get (AFAICT). I got permission for the most of the others, but I thought the visual was good as is ... mostly. Maube I'll revisit.

Recent related thread (UK): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48802535

I don't want to be negative here, just asking out of curiosity. Does anyone actually use apps/services like this? Why would it be useful?

Normally when I want to get somewhere I just use local public transport navigation app which calculates the route and shows me estimated time of when my tram or bus arrives (taking into account its GPS data). Why would I need to know live position of every vehicle in the city?

Nevertheless, cool project!

Similar real time traffic map for Switzerland <https://maps.trafimage.ch/ch.sbb.netzkarte?baselayers=ch.sbb...>

• ceejayoz

  today at 12:41 PM

  Even five minutes late gets you a red dot. Very Swiss.

This thread is full of people linking similar projects for different locations. The next step must be to combine it all to a global live map. Useful for... something, I'm sure.

• Betelbuddy

  today at 1:05 PM

  We should also have a hierarchy:

  Platinum - Real Live Location

  Gold - Live as Estimated Where It Should Be From Last Observation

  Silver - Live as Estimated According to Published Schedule

  You Kidding Me? - Animated JavaScript...

For Deutsche Bahn it will be just a photo....

• attendant3446

  today at 12:31 PM

  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 =)

• CorvusCrypto

  today at 12:35 PM

  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

• wolvoleo

  today at 12:48 PM

  And yet pretty accurate :)

• rrr_oh_man

  today at 12:08 PM

  This also doesn’t seem to move, despite the numerous AI CSS slop badges

a similar real-time map for trains in norway: https://togkart.banenor.no/

Similar map for the Netherlands: http://ovzoeker.nl/

See https://zbiorkom.live/cities for a live public transport in several cities in Poland.

Pittsburgh!

https://truetime.rideprt.org/map

Would be perfect post end of January for next FOSDEM.

• krautsauer

  today at 12:01 PM

  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.)

same thing with global data (but of course not full coverage everywhere): https://travic.app

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.

• georgefrowny

  today at 10:42 AM

  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.

  • tomtomtom777

    today at 10:52 AM

    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!!

feel like its computed from the time table and not live or am I mistaken?

• lode

  today at 11:21 AM

  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.

• tmtvl

  today at 11:22 AM

  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).

• Alexander-Barth

  today at 11:22 AM

  For most of them it says "real position" and some show a delay.

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?

• ap-andersson

  today at 12:19 PM

  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.

• jpoesen

  today at 10:13 AM

  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."

• melicerte

  today at 11:03 AM

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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!

• loloquwowndueo

  today at 11:21 AM

  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 !

Author here! Thanks for posting the app!

Two notes on what you are looking at:

Not every vehicle is a live position. STIB-MIVB and TEC publish vehicle positions and those are shown as received. De Lijn and NMBS/SNCB do not, so their vehicles are computed from the timetable and corrected with the delays they do publish (GTFS-RT). Each marker is tagged live, computed with delay, or computed, and the computed ones are drawn dimmer.

All data is open data. The four operators publish through one federal portal (data.belgianmobility.io) under CC BY 4.0: GTFS for timetables and route geometry, GTFS-RT for delays, alerts and positions where available. NMBS ships no route geometry, so train paths are routed over Infrabel's open track network.

This is not specific to Belgium. Nearly every country publishes public-transport open data in the same formats, and I was able to locate feeds for most European countries. A map like this can be built for almost any of them!

Happy to answer questions on the data or the simulation :)

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