13 comments

  • petra 7 hours ago
    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.

  • zephyreon 6 hours ago
    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 1 hour ago
      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
  • afferi300rina 7 hours ago
    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!
  • kent8192 4 hours ago
    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.
    • qwertykb 1 hour ago
      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.

  • bluebarbet 6 hours ago
    >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?

  • wolvoleo 10 hours ago
    Nice site but there's so few systems in it.
  • TimK65 10 hours ago
    Very nice! I think we're confusing route length and track length, though.
    • qwertykb 9 hours ago
      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 8 hours ago
        Could track length include sidings and double-tracks and extensions and other maintenance track needs that aren't useful for the passengers themselves?
  • ranger_danger 2 hours ago
    > 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 1 hour ago
      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!
  • zeristor 12 hours ago
    Looks good.

    London, Paris, Copenhagen, Rome, Madrid?

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

    • qwertykb 12 hours ago
      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 4 hours ago
        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!

  • xtiansimon 6 hours ago
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  • zephyrwhimsy 11 hours ago
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  • hyi96 4 hours ago
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