Live map of public transport in Belgium
openbaarvervoerbelgie.be185 points by coinfused 16 hours ago
185 points by coinfused 16 hours ago
Is it something new? I think Yandex Maps shows busses in real time since long ago (at least in large cities like Moscow). The busses have GPS and send the data in real time. I wanted to post a link but at night there are not many busses and the first ones will appear 1-2 hours later: https://yandex.ru/maps/213/moscow/transport/buses/?l=masstra...
Similar real time traffic map for Switzerland <https://maps.trafimage.ch/ch.sbb.netzkarte?baselayers=ch.sbb...>
I've mentioned this before on another thread about the swiss map but for the uninitiated:
It's certainly a cool map and useful to get a general idea how many trains are around at any given time, but it's important to note that this is not real data. They use the train schedule combined with the projected delay to estimate track location. I'm not sure if it's because SBB has an interest in keeping reported delays low or if they think exposing real data is a security risk, but I noticed the data being fake on several occasions, for example:
- My train wasn't able to continue its journey and was stuck between two stations for a few minutes while the map showed it continue to the next few stations up until the point where it started moving again, when their App also showed it running with a delay of 8min.
- On several occasions: watching the map show a train roll into the station and driving off, while seeing from my window that the train is only just arriving when the map shows it as between stations already.
The app for public transportation in the Stockholm region give real time location updates for its busses, and station-to-station updates for tram and commuter trains. With the constant delays for the operator in my area it is invaluable for catching busses.
This is a simulated map based on published transit schedules. As I’m typing this I sit on a bus that’s nowhere to be seen on the map.
I have a crowdsourcing app [0] that powers maps like this [1] in South Africa. Where I'm able to directly or indirectly get bus feeds for agencies, I'm able to augment them and provide a hybrid of live vs scheduled services.
It's been a fun project, both the app and the site. The idea with the app's that there's often numerous commuters on a bus/train vs relying on a hard to get vehicle telemetry feed/source. So I'm trying to get a fun/friendly way of getting commuters to share their location data in exchange for shared alerts and updates on delays.
Nothing novel, if you're in a first world country lol.
[0] https://socioloza.co.za/ [1] https://movinggauteng.co.za/gautrain
Transit telemetry is inherently spotty on these public-facing applications.
If it's like other systems, it will resort to transit schedule estimations when data is missing and then try to sync as live data becomes available.
And unfortunately, like most apps, it never bothers telling the user when the data is accurate, and when it's a guess.
The amazing thing about this is if you zoom into ski resorts, it looks to have the live positioning of cablecars.
I work on the open-source application Catenary Maps:
It has a live map of public transport around the world, mostly showing the actual vehicle positions (although we interpolate from the estimated arrivals for some European operators). You can also click on vehicles (trains, buses, ferries, etc) to see their past and predicted future arrivals, click on a station to see its departure board, or click on a line to see its variants.
For Deutsche Bahn it will be just a photo....
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 =)
At least we can do betting on train delays.
https://www.iamexpat.de/lifestyle/lifestyle-news/new-site-al...
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
When I was traveling in Uzbekistan I found a map with live locations of busses operating in Tashkent quite useful on Yandex Map. Today I learned that similar services exist for Switzerland. Not sure though how useful this is for daily life if you have information systems at each stop and public transport that is alsmost always on time.
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.
We really need some open source project to manage all the shims across the world. Like in Seattle the WSDOT API has live ferry locations but they never made a GTFS feed for, so i made my own shim for it. I feel like there needs to be some way to make the data access easier for developers.
The nest step would be to map every human. Shouldn't be too hard, there are only 8B of us.
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...
I think subway rail systems do have "real live location", but whether that information is consistently provided to public distribution for use through apps is a question mark.
I suspect most systems are a mix of your platinum, gold and silver (and kidding me).
Lots of systems have some sort of real location data, but it can be... shaky.
In Dublin, train 'realtime location' is, AIUI, based on arrival at stations plus time-based estimate. This _usually_ works okay. Buses have transponders which register when they pass a stop. Or, ah, well, buses usually have transponders, and those transponders sometimes work. New buses sometimes lack them, as do very old buses used for covering capacity problems. If a bus without a transponder is used, they seem to just estimate where it is based on the schedule, which is useless. If a bus without a transponder is inserted out of schedule (they sometimes do this at peak time) it's totally invisible to the realtime system. Sometimes, the transponder isn't picked up, and then the bus will appear to hang around for a while and then abruptly teleport a few stops forward. Sometimes, a bus's transponder doesn't seem to start working when the bus starts up for the first few stops.
Still, it's better than when I was a kid, when you really just had the printed schedule, assuming the rain hadn't gotten to it.
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!!
I always complained about the lack of displays at the tram stops, now it's getting better.
Even more impressive: https://api.transitous.org/ (but not everything is live)
Great companion to https://irail.be, a minimalist counterpart to this site, also based on open data.
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.)
Sorry, wrong reply button, meant to add that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49596821 sigh
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.
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!
I use the dutch version of this (OVInfo: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nl.skywave.ovi... ) which does have a nicer interface: You _can_ load a map and gawk at it, but by default it loads very fast and shows a list of stops/stations in order of how close they are, and clicking on them shows the up-to-the-minute (in some regions, up-to-the-second) exact departure times including any current delays.
In an public transport heavy region (lots of The Netherlands is PT heavy) this changes how you interact with public transport. You stop planning. You decide you want to go to X, so you walk to the nearest stop you know will take you to X (in contrast to someone who rarely uses PT or lives in a PT light area: They either don't know the routes and thus don't know which stop to walk to, or there is only one stop within walking distance if that), and as you walk, it takes all of about 5 seconds, literally, to know if you should walk briskly or have time for a detour or whatever. Or even check if a different stop would be more efficient.
It's powered by the same data. 'look, a map!' is visually the most interesting, and thus perhaps appropriate here, where I would assume most readers don't even live in Belgium.
Absolutely, the official apps are lacking. Google maps has incorrect timetables and the TEC app doesn't give you any way of knowing when the next bus will be and where in traffic it is. I recently had a bus at say 10:00, I get there at 9:58 and wait until 10:15 for the bus. Leaving the stop and seeing the bus pass a bit later is extremely infuriating. This kind of map lets you check where the bus actually is. Not so convenient on a phone but I'll take it.
Because there's about as many ways of taking public transit as there are users. For many, live maps are critical. I don't understand why either, but people want the "control" it offers and knowing that their bus is around the corner (it's not, the data is always over a minute stale because it goes through 5 intermediaries)
Delete that feature and you suddenly get a horde of angry users
Got to admit, I like to see evidence that the bus actually exists and is coming.
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.
Similar maps:
Boston: https://tmap.live. London: https://londonunderground.live
Not to downplay your effort, but design look very vibe coded.
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.
I'm based in Denmark. And thanks for the detailed explanation. I've never really worked with public transit data before, but it seems like there are quite a few interesting possibilities for personal projects, especially with GTFS/GTFS-RT.
> as I can never trust the actual timers on the bus stops.
Assuming these show 'live' data (as opposed to the estimated times based on the schedule), it's probably the same data that apps like this would be using.
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."
See https://zbiorkom.live/cities for a live public transport in several cities in Poland.
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.
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).
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.
That's awesome, we need map to cover all over the world
a similar real-time map for trains in norway: https://togkart.banenor.no/
In the netherlands we have 9292 which imo is the most mature implementation.
same thing with global data (but of course not full coverage everywhere): https://travic.app
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 :)
Well done. Very useful. concerning trains,when you click on any train, it's labelled Town A-Town B, while in fact in travels town B -> town A
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Nice effort. Well done.
Those who don’t bookmark but write url by memory get extra points /s
Ptm.be is for rent btw (public transport map)