Show HN: Public transit systems as data – lines, stations, railcars, and history

petra a day ago | parent | next [-]

This is interesting, for sure.

Thinking about this, I think what happens if we take it to the extreme - a system that lets a single user enter his route to work - and compare how various transportation systems, including innovative ones, would impact his day to day.

It's really hard to build such tool, and if it's done well and made appealing to users, it could be the base of a political tool for people to pressure their representatives to implement new and better systems and improve voters lives.

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cyberrock a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's difficult to tell what the end goal is, but you probably need to see some of these systems and broaden your understanding first.

For example, Tokyo Metro has many out-of-gate transfers, where the user taps out of special gates (Ikebukuro M/F) and into another paid area (Ikebukuro Y) on the same fare, as long as it's within 30 minutes. There are also out-of-gate transfers between different stations, such as Shintomicho and Tsukiji. Beijing has transfers within the same paid area that are notorious for being long and/or congested, so much so that some believe it's an intentional traffic control mechanism. These all have significant implications on actual experienced commute time and fare.

So if the end goal includes human navigation or commute statistics, it's incomplete without such considerations. Those government APIs you're using are only concerned with ridership and not these details. Short of visiting these places, you could watch vlogs (there's probably 5 for every Tokyo Metro station), and you could perhaps simulate some routes on existing navigation systems.

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kent8192 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is interesting! However, can't it switch the unit to meters, not miles? From the link you provided, it appears the API doesn't include information about its unit in the responses. So, it's confusing.

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qwertykb a day ago | parent [-]

theres a button in the top right to switch from miles to kilometers, that does it globally and handles the calculation gracefully!

Edit: I've had my coffee now, and see what you mean. the API exposes it at /api/systems/{system}/lines/{line}, as well as aggregate for the system at /api/systems/{system}, working on supplying distance unit in api response now.

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qwertykb a day ago | parent [-]

added unit type to those endpoints now.

	▲	kent8192 a day ago \| parent [-]
		Thank you for your effort and apologise for confusing you. English is my second language, so it might not be clear to native speakers. Thank you for adding the unit type to those endpoints! I'll enjoy your tool!

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afferi300rina a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The ⌘K command palette is a great touch for this terminal-style UI. It would be even better if we could search by railcar models (like 'R211') or specific line colors directly through it. Excited to see this grow!

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zephyreon a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

So interesting that Baltimore’s very subpar public transit system made it into the first batch of systems — not complaining at all I love that city & love to see it in random places on the internet :)

	▲	qwertykb a day ago \| parent [-]
		When i started buidling systems, I started with my Lived Experiences, WMATA and Baltimore are close to home for me as I grew up in the DMV

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bluebarbet a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>a unique visual style that appeals to transit enthusiasts

But it seems to be just an API with a website sporting a terminal font. What am I missing?

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wolvoleo 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Nice site but there's so few systems in it.

	▲	qwertykb 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		yep, its still and will always be WIP, every system exposes their data a bit differently, so it's not completely plug and play. you're welcome to contribute to the existing system data however! https://github.com/WaffleThief123/publictransit-systems/

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TimK65 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Very nice! I think we're confusing route length and track length, though.

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qwertykb 2 days ago | parent [-]

Can you elaborate further on this so I might be able to fix it? As best I am able to discern, system track length for all current ones is accurate.

	▲	bombcar 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Could track length include sidings and double-tracks and extensions and other maintenance track needs that aren't useful for the passengers themselves?

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zeristor 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Looks good.

London, Paris, Copenhagen, Rome, Madrid?

I guess it takes a while to add each new one in.

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qwertykb 2 days ago | parent [-]

tysm! Yeah I've got a bit of a backlog, as each set of data for each system needs a deep-dive on how the system exposes it programmatically, then need to do tests and some studying on each to build cars,timelines, etc. Toronto is on the list, if there's any in particular you want, file an issue on gh, and I'll do my best to get it added in a timely manner. https://github.com/wafflethief123/publictransit-systems/issu...

	▲	well_ackshually a day ago \| parent [-]
		Working in the industry: this is a can of worms that you might regret opening, because of simply how completely insane so many of the systems there are. I've seen cities repurpose text fields in otherwise perfectly standard formats because they needed a way to indicate that the bus was {insert any absolutely insane situation}, and not parsing that field means that the data doesn't make sense. Your best bet for most of Europe are the open data platforms. Example for France: https://transport.data.gouv.fr/. There's soooome standardisation around a few formats: GTFS, Netex, SIRI along with their various extensions (like GTFS-RT for realtime data), etc. Just parsing these (which is already a large undertaking in and of itself) should get you covered for a bunch of networks. Oh, also, much of the data you'll find, especially from smaller cities or regions, is awful. You're going to be told that the line icon is white, on white text, and that's actually perfectly normal because actually their bus header is from an obscure system from former Yugoslavia that actually interprets "0xFFFFFF" as black when on layer 1. Good luck!

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ranger_danger a day ago | parent | prev [-]

> Tokyo Metro is one of two rapid transit operators in Tokyo, Japan (the other being Toei Subway)

I'm assuming this text is an AI hallucination because there are dozens of rail operators in Tokyo. Tokyo Metro is not even the largest and basically only operates an underground subway. JR (Japan Rail) operates above-ground and is much larger (and nation-wide).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_urban_rail_systems_in_...

Just a single line of JR East's (Yamanote) moves a third as many people daily as Tokyo Metro does all by itself, and JR has over 50 lines just in Tokyo.

	▲	qwertykb a day ago \| parent [-]
		TIL, thank you for the reference! I completely missed that while building out Tokyo Metro, I've never been to japan (though I want to) and as such, I'm not familiar with the vast systems. It took long enough to get data to build tokyo's metro, and I based that title off several articles I had read. When I have some time this week, I'll work to add the rest of the subway systems in region and update the title. ty!