A couple of people have put together a real time tracking map of all trains on the London Underground. It is extremely awesome:
This wouldn’t have cost a single dollar in public money to put together, and from the sound of it the people who put it together just needed the raw data, ran a clever program and came up with something exceedingly useful in just a couple of hours.
Why can’t we ever do anything this cool with Auckland’s public transport system? Why are we still struggling to provide real-time information at our train stations?
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It is cool, as is the National Rail one. I hope something like this will come along soon in NZ too – but perhaps there are differing concepts of what is and isn’t a public good in operation. The campaign for open source information is much stronger in the UK than in NZ, I guess?
Its funny because I have been thinking about something like this for Auckland for some time now, I would find it far more useful to turn up to a station and be able to see where the train actually was than look at a number on a PID. It wouldn’t even have to show the entire rail network but just the line it was on. Whats more it would actually be something that would make waiting for the train more interesting which would further help to grow patronage. I imagine that train control have something like this to control the network so it shouldn’t be that hard to develop.
I agree Matt, though I vote for both things: a “to the second” countdown to when the next train arrives like there is in Barcelona – plus a TV screen with a map showing exactly where the train is.
You get used to the idea of trains pulling in to YOUR station every 90 seconds in rush hour, but you don’t appreciate the incredible complexity of the system as a whole. It amazes me that it works as well as it does.
Now… Here is a neat public transport idea from Berlin, even if it does seem to be sponsored by Volkswagen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4o0ZVeixYU
LOL, that’s classic Obi. We should totally get a slide for Britomart.
I run into Waterloo station and my i-phone tells me which platform I need and when it leaves. It’s awesome!
I wish there was access to all available realtime data. It would not be too difficult to make something like this if ARTA gave access. I’m just thinking of all the neat features you could make. Like on a mobile device use the inbuilt GPS to get your current location, then select a destination location and automatically calculate the best way for you to get there based on accurate information. Calculating the probability you will be able to make a certain bus/train from where you are based on the speed you are walking and taking the terrain into account. Also work out how likely it is you will make a transfer from one service to another.
To 5689hfjijkghjkdf (how do you pronounce that, is it like Eyjafjallajökull?):
Google Maps for Mobile can almost do what you want with scheduled data (not realtime). I use it every day in conjunction with getting realtime stop info to my mobile via bookmarking links to bus stop data as (unofficially) outlined here.
I’m on Vodafone’s “Broadband Lite” plan on my mobile which makes it all affordable ($10/month for 100MB).
Canterbury has a similar system being developed http://arcgis.ecan.govt.nz/Beta/Metro/wheresmybus.aspx – it doesn’t show the location of the bus but it does show realtime info for all stops. Considering the London one is merely what Canterbury has with a marker show the guesstimated location of the train, it would be quite simple to alter it to be the same. Of course buses are a bit harder as they will be stuck in traffic etc.
As far as I know ARTA does have A LOT of data coming their way from the buses that have GPS tracking on board but I also heard that they “can’t deal with that much data” and that the GPS sensors on the buses do not work as well as expected …
In any case, regardless of how complex is the data or how much of it is, it SHOULD be publicly available in real time so that clever projects like the “tube” one can be developed … and there could be more accountability of the bus operators in terms of reliability, punctuality, etc
I have been doing my best for lobby for this (i am a programmer) with the new live bus times i now have some data to work with….. keep a look out
Sounds exciting, keep us posted!