Live map of public transport in Belgium

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.

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.

The amazing thing about this is if you zoom into ski resorts, it looks to have the live positioning of cablecars.

For reference all of these generally use the gtfs standard

https://gtfs.org/

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

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...

A lot of the transit authorities have live maps: https://www.rvf.de/map

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

There is travic.app, which uses realtime data, if available.

And yet pretty accurate :)

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

I always complained about the lack of displays at the tram stops, now it's getting better.

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...

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.)

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.

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

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).

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

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.

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."

> 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.

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That’s because dark mode itself is hard to read. Use normal mode like god intended your eyes will thank you.

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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