[HN Gopher] Show HN: Trains.fyi - a live map of passenger trains...
___________________________________________________________________
Show HN: Trains.fyi - a live map of passenger trains in the US and
Canada
Hey all! My train the other day was delayed and I got curious where
they all were at any given time, so I built a map and figured I'd
share it.
Author : ryry
Score : 261 points
Date : 2023-11-27 16:47 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (trains.fyi)
(TXT) w3m dump (trains.fyi)
| miki_tyler wrote:
| This is so cool! I just happen to post my own project about train
| maps in HN like an hour ago!
|
| Coincidence...??? I think not!
| sea-gold wrote:
| Because I was curious (and others may be as well):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38434010
| thomasahle wrote:
| I didn't know there was a trans-Canadian railroad. Did anyone try
| it?
| dewert wrote:
| I haven't tried it, because it's outrageously expensive to get
| a cabin with a bed, and I don't want to sit in a chair for a
| week.
|
| But it's pretty famous - we even have a song about it! [1]
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Railroad_Trilogy
| morkalork wrote:
| Taking the dome car through the rockies and a bit of the
| prairies would be awesome but flying out there just for that
| is hard to justify.
| a3c9 wrote:
| I took it around 5-6 years ago when I was moving to Vancouver
| from the east coast. It was a great way to see the country and
| meet some other travellers - such a strange travel option
| attracts some interesting folks!
|
| The highlight though is the Jasper-Vancouver leg going through
| the Rockies - if you don't have 3 days to burn that's a good
| choice. Rocky Mountaineer line goes through there as well iirc.
| chrisfosterelli wrote:
| It's a big part of the country's history; the project was a key
| bargaining chip to get BC to join Canada. Development started
| with the first prime minister and the actual construction was
| incredibly expensive and filled with controversy over bribes
| and exploding construction costs, causing gov turnover and
| bringing the federal gov into significant financial risk a few
| times. But they did push onward to completion and it became the
| core pathway for the further settlement of western Canada,
| which was instrumental to the country's expansion. Nowadays
| it's primarily a freight railway, the passenger traffic is very
| minimal and tickets are very expensive; it's more of a tourism
| attraction than practical method of passenger transport.
| jszymborski wrote:
| The cross canada rail trip is that deadly combo of
| exceptionally expensive and exceptionally slow.
| chrisfosterelli wrote:
| Nowadays for sure. But before the trans-Canada highway and
| before commercial flight, it was a pretty great deal!
| ghaff wrote:
| That pretty much describes long distance North American
| rail generally. At least in the US, I'd add that it's not
| only slow but could be delayed by a day or more. I've
| occasionally toyed with the idea of taking one of those
| trains for at least part of their route but I have a
| feeling that it's one of those things where the idea >> the
| reality and it would get pretty old once the novelty wore
| off.
|
| Later this year I'm going with a more luxurious version
| instead (ocean liner).
| Lammy wrote:
| Relevant: Canadian Pacific Railway's Rogers Pass Project
| (1983-1989, 1hr27m)
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zepXkTPvqA
| svarlamov wrote:
| Love this project! Can you tell us a bit about what stack you
| used to build this? Were there easy-to-use APIs to get this data
| in realtime?
| klinquist wrote:
| I can comment on Caltrain only, the location is available via
| the 511.org API.
|
| I built a project that predicts how late trains are based on
| their current location vs historical averages and posts the
| data to Mastodon. https://caltrain.live.
| ryry wrote:
| thanks!
|
| I did a quick write up about it here:
| https://rydercalmdown.com/projects/trains-fyi/
|
| The hardest part was learning about GTFS-RT, which was a data
| format I wasn't familiar with until now.
| zhivota wrote:
| Very nice, thanks for the write up :). I was thinking about
| how you could get route maps, without actually having to
| source shape files. Given you are tracking trains every
| minute, you could probably build up your own route maps by
| dropping a point every time you get one, and connecting them
| with straight lines. Over time the route would become closer
| and closer to reality.
| h1fra wrote:
| Looking at the speed of the trains is a bit depressing. USA had
| so much potential to built the best high-speed railway network...
| oldpersonintx wrote:
| it already has something much more sophisticated - a high-speed
| air network
|
| think your train is efficient? a plane can fly in a straight
| line between any two points in the US! beat that! ever see a
| train cross one of the great lakes? no challenge for a plane!
| rerouting a rail line can cost billions...but only a tiny bit
| of fuel to reroute a plane...not to mention I can go coast to
| coast in five hours on a plane but the world's fastest train
| would take much longer...
| rangestransform wrote:
| in the northeast I still prefer to take acela over being
| dehumanized by the TSA
| chroma wrote:
| TSA can screen people the same for rail, they just tend not
| to. Ideally we'd go back to pre-9/11 screening for
| everything.
| rsynnott wrote:
| High speed rail is most competitive with short and medium
| range air. Say you want to go from SF to LA. That's a 90
| minute flight. Plus a few hours of getting to and from the
| airports plus faffing around within the airports. Or it's a 6
| hour drive. Or, with a top-quality high-speed line it'd be a
| little under two hours on the train, handily beating any
| current option.
|
| High speed rail wouldn't be all that competitive for going
| coast to coast in the US, definitely.
| dylan604 wrote:
| The train situation in the USofA is depressing on so many more
| levels than just speed. Availability is even worse. I'm in
| Dallas, but to get to Denver, I have to go to Chicago first and
| involves a >2 hour bus ride along the way. WTF?
| gosub100 wrote:
| Most of the states are too big to be economical. I think the
| biggest disappointment with US rail is that it doesn't get
| enough trucks off the highway. There should be no reason for
| trucks to venture more than a couple hundred miles from the
| nearest rail terminal. Not only is it wasteful, but it's more
| dangerous having trucks driving across the entire country.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Even in the densest areas of the country (NYC metro area),
| it's abysmal by developed world.
|
| I got caught in probably the 2nd worst traffic driving
| to/from my parents (70mi away) this weekend I've had in 20
| years. And yet it was still about 30min faster, each way,
| than if I took Metro North.
| stickfigure wrote:
| Speed would be nice, but speed is not the problem. If the
| trains just ran on time, 50mph would be just fine. The problem
| with Amtrak is frequent multiple-hour delays that stack up. The
| schedule is totally unpredictable.
| saagarjha wrote:
| High-speed rail typically excels when it can get you
| somewhere in a few hours because you wouldn't want to hop on
| a plane for that. At 50 mph, that gets you...basically
| nowhere. If you're doing 200 then you can cross most states
| in that time.
| mtalantikite wrote:
| For me it's also cost. I have family in the Boston area and
| often traveling from NYC on Amtrak is at least as expensive
| -- and usually more expensive -- than flying.
|
| But I'd also love if we could go faster than 50mph. TGV in
| France, which launched 41 years ago, travel between 167mph
| and 198mph [1].
|
| [1] https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/TGV
| jrockway wrote:
| "On time" is a metric that is focused on heavily, but to me
| it's meaningless. The LIRR is "on time" via schedule padding;
| a 50 mile trip to Ronkonkoma takes 80 minutes on the fastest
| express train. With line speeds largely 80mph throughout the
| route, commuters are robbed of an hour every single day. But
| hey, at least the "on time performance" metric is at 99%.
| Easy to do when your average speed is 37mph on 80mph track.
|
| The LIRR Today has a great article, that I cannot for the
| life of me find, where the author used train speed data
| between stations to figure out what speed "most trains"
| accomplished (so accounting for curves, station stops, etc.)
| and redid the schedules according to that data. Without
| padding, everyone that uses the LIRR would save hours a week
| in commuting.
|
| Incidentally, the LIRR has been moving _away_ from higher
| train speeds and better connections to reduce travel time in
| favor of arriving at terminals within 6 minutes of the
| scheduled time. Schedule padding, replacing 80mph switches
| with 60mph switches (for the Elmont work), and removing all
| scheduled connections at Jamaica. I think it 's crazy and I'm
| glad I don't commute to the city from Long Island. The
| connections at Jamaica disappearing is the most sad to me;
| that station has a really unique setup where 3 trains arrive
| at once, and you can transfer through the middle train to get
| to the other two destinations. It used to work like
| clockwork, but obviously if the middle train is late, the OTP
| for 3 trains decreases. Since that's the metric they care
| about, and not "can I get from any city terminal to any
| destination easily", that's what gets optimized out. I don't
| think it's good. It's nice if the trains run on time, but I'd
| rather be 20 minutes late once a week than spend an extra 5
| hours on the train every week. But, not what the agency
| values.
| chroma wrote:
| HSR only makes economic sense in the northeast. Everywhere else
| is too spread out for rail to compete with air travel. The most
| popular air route in the western US (SF-LA) isn't worth making
| high speed rail between. The project is expected to cost over
| $30 billion. Assuming 100% of air passengers use rail (4
| million per year), at $150 per ticket it would take 50 years to
| break even... and that assumes zero maintenance costs. Also it
| would be slower than taking a plane.
| seedless-sensat wrote:
| I am looking at this while sitting on Amtrak. It is about 14mi
| behind my current position, but still very cool!
| ryry wrote:
| Yeah, I'm going to add a disclaimer about this. I've been
| watching the GO trains from my window this morning and they lag
| about a minute behind. My site grabs data on a minute interval,
| and I know some of the API's say they purposefully add GPS lag.
| shuntress wrote:
| I've made something similar in the past and my experience
| with the specific API was that it was surprisingly well
| considered but the actual data it returned was unreliable at
| best. Not just "slightly obfuscated for paranoid physical
| security reasons" but actually missing trains and reporting
| incorrect names.
| hardcopy wrote:
| For Amtrak only you can use the official source
| https://www.amtrak.com/track-your-train.html too (it shows
| route and also delay)
| hexane360 wrote:
| Any plans to support Denver's commuter trains (RTD)?
| ryry wrote:
| I rode it a few weeks ago and completely forgot about it! I'll
| add it to the list. thanks!
| phyphy wrote:
| Here in India we have an app named "Where is my train?". Local
| people use this app a lot when traveling by train. It's not
| government owned either and has no ads. Just throwing in here for
| some inspiration since I don't know the inner workings of that
| app.
|
| Edit: It uses nearby cell towers to estimate the location of
| train
| alienreborn wrote:
| No NJ Transit trains?
| ryry wrote:
| I'm currently on the wait-list for the API. Took me 2 days to
| even figure out how to register.
| mastercheif wrote:
| NJ Transit's data operation is sub-par. The developers of the
| "Transit" app have been sparring with them to get live bus
| data restored https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/transpor
| tation/2023/1...
| ciabattabread wrote:
| The NJ Transit website/app looks ramshackle compared to the
| MTA.
| jrockway wrote:
| The MTA also has a really neat railroad tracking tool:
| https://radar.mta.info/
|
| This feels like an internal app that somehow got a public
| URL. It has neat features like being able to make the
| same departure board they have in their stations, and it
| has a departure view that shows how many people are on
| the train: https://radar.mta.info/countdown/GCT
| ecshafer wrote:
| That is a very unsurprising experience for NJ Transit.
| anjel wrote:
| Very cool. Why are NJ Transit trains unreported?
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| It appears to be primarily pulling from Amtrak data feeds
| kylecazar wrote:
| Wow, I don't know why I thought there would be... Way, way more
| trains active at a given time.
|
| I suppose I overestimated passenger rail popularity in this
| country.. I knew it wasn't relatively huge, but there's several
| hundred miles in some cases between trains.
| ska wrote:
| The passenger rail coverage [edit: service] in most of North
| America is basically pathetic, for systemic reasons.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Coverage is actually surprisingly wide, just the service
| level is something out of the 1870s for a lot of stations.
| The siting for a lot of stations is usually pretty poor as
| well with terrible/nonexistent walkshed considerations (see
| the Palm Springs station, try walking to your hotel from
| that).
| ska wrote:
| Fair enough, I was using "coverage" for actual trips, not
| nominal rail extent. "Service" is a better description.
| Your point about siting is very true.
| gosub100 wrote:
| > systemic
|
| you misspelled "union"
| ska wrote:
| If it were that simple, it would be much easier to fix.
| condiment wrote:
| The site is incomplete, and there are way, way more trains
| active at a given time. For instance the Tri-Rail and
| Brightline (high-speed rail) in Florida each have 5-6 trains
| running simultaneously. Brightline is notable as the US's first
| credible foray into high-speed rail. Similarly most major
| cities in the US have either light rail, rapid transit, or
| both, which is maybe not included in this map. "Passenger rail"
| might have some highly specific semantic meaning that leaves
| these out of this map.
| ZanyProgrammer wrote:
| Obviously it's not the first credible foray into HSR in the
| US-that honor is Acelas.
|
| Edit: if you're referring to Brightline West, construction
| hasn't even started.
| paddy_m wrote:
| Acela isn't HSR, and Metroliner which came before had
| travel times from NYC to DC as low as 2.5 hours. Acela does
| the same trip in 3.5 hours. Metroliner lowered trip times
| primarily through faster acceleration.
| ZanyProgrammer wrote:
| By any definition but yours Acela is indeed HSR, it's the
| fucking fastest train in North America!
| trbleclef wrote:
| That doesn't mean it's fast
| TylerE wrote:
| It is though. On a trip earlier this year I clocked at it
| almost 150mph via GPS. That's HSR by any definition.
| JJMcJ wrote:
| It's what the rest of the industrialized world calls "a
| train".
| lmm wrote:
| It's substantially faster than Brightline, so claiming it
| isn't HSR but Brightline somehow is is absurd.
| fragmede wrote:
| Acela tops out at 150-160 mph (240 km/h-260 km/h) which
| is is above the 200 km/h bar for it to be considered HSR.
| Unfortunately, the route it runs on has several speed
| limits below even 100 km/h due to bridges and tunnels
| beyond the design life, so it's hard to call it HSR when
| it can't actually hit those advertised speeds.
| thatfrenchguy wrote:
| Peak speed is how HSRs are defined, and Brightline is
| 200km/h, which is really mediocre for technology past the
| 80s, this is the speed at high most upgraded lines run in
| France.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > Acela does the same trip in 3.5 hours.
|
| I just rode it last week, and it actually took 3 hours,
| not 3.5.
|
| Most of the NEC corridor from DC to NYC has a speed limit
| of 125mph; from NYC to New Haven, it's generally 70mph
| (!), from New Haven thence to about Kingston generally
| 90mph, and from there to Boston it's mostly 150mph. Given
| the density of the corridor, Amtrak _should_ be trying
| for 150-220mph speed limits, but even 125mph is generally
| agreed upon to be the lowest end of HSR.
|
| A surprisingly easy way to make the train go faster would
| be to redesign the switching sections before large
| stations to allow trains to go faster through them. You
| can probably cut around 10 minutes out of the entire
| length with an investment of less than $100 million just
| by doing that.
| bluGill wrote:
| https://pedestrianobservations.com/2023/11/24/curves-in-
| fast... is a good analysis for anyone who doesn't want to
| believe jcranmer or wants more detail. (what I linked is
| a second best approach, but it links to other low hanging
| fruit like switches)
| jcranmer wrote:
| And the first link in that post goes to
| https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/02/08/fix-the-
| slowes..., which more directly speaks about the impact of
| slow speeds in station throats.
| paddy_m wrote:
| I read that post, and I have been working slowly on a set
| of jupyter notebooks, with ipyleaflet (mapping)
| integration to make building train maps (with max speeds)
| easier. Looking for colaborators
|
| https://github.com/paddymul/train-calculator
| soupfordummies wrote:
| Not totally sure on this, just making an informed guess:
|
| I think "passenger rail" implies passenger trains running on
| the "full/main" railroad lines that run all over the US.
| Something like light rail or local transit typically have
| their own discrete lines, in my experience.
|
| Again, could be wrong, that's just how I interpret it.
| solaarphunk wrote:
| Bright line isn't HSR. The average speed is something like
| 65mph
| tacostakohashi wrote:
| Outside the northeast corridor and a few others, there are many
| Amtrak trains are only once a day, or less, and often with long
| routes. It's unfortunate. The network is pretty good in terms
| of coverage / states covered on the map (since it's optimized
| for that), but lots of places it's pretty much impractical to
| use because the one time/day doesn't work.
|
| I really wish they could at least get to a minimum of two
| trains, a "day" and "night" train on every route. You'd think
| the marginal cost would be minimal considering all the
| track/stations are there anyway!
| threeio wrote:
| Isn't that mostly based on the fact that they share rail
| time? Its not like these tracks are unused in the other
| periods of time, they're just not Amtrak trains.
| Lammy wrote:
| There used to be way way more lines forming more of a mesh
| than the skeleton we have today. Through a series of mega-
| mergers we are down to effectively a west-coast-duopoly and
| an east-coast-duopoly of companies that can run long-
| distance trains.
|
| When railroad companies merge they tend to abandon one or
| the other's trackage in areas where the formerly-separate
| networks ran between the same market areas, keeping the
| minimum segments of track to cover the maximum number of
| customers (not even maximum geographical area).
|
| Check out the 2023 North American Abandoned Railroad Lines
| map: https://www.frrandp.com/p/the-map.html
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| It would be a lot busier if cargo trains were added.
| jcranmer wrote:
| US population can be approximated as relatively dense
| populations in California, the Northeast, a central portion of
| Texas, and parts of the Midwest, with rural Europe-ish levels
| of density (with some greater pockets of density nestled
| within) in the rest of the country ~east of the Mississippi
| (and a lesser degree in the Pacific Northwest), and truly empty
| regions basically everywhere else.
|
| In terms of where there should be lots of trains that there
| isn't, it's largely the Midwest outside of Chicago, Texas
| Triangle, and the Southeast, all of which could probably
| support hourly intercity HSR trains if they were competently
| built (although especially in the Southeast, this is going to
| be restricted basically to a single corridor).
| screye wrote:
| The only half decent fast railway (acela) in the US costs more
| than an uber+flight for the same trip.
|
| I'm surprised anyone takes it at all.
|
| US rail is starting at negative 100. Only a small group of
| masochists (raises hand) choose to inflict this on themselves.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| In contrast have a look at a snapshot of air travel the other
| day.
|
| https://x.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1729195110888620057?s=20
|
| If we're looking for some low hanging fruit around how to
| possibly lower CO2 emissions, well folks here it is.
|
| The solutions to our climate problem have been staring us in the
| face since the 1900s.
| kouru225 wrote:
| If we just made train travel an economic and logistical
| alternative to air travel, it'd make such a difference.
| gruez wrote:
| >If we're looking for some low hanging fruit around how to
| possibly lower CO2 emissions, well folks here it is.
|
| I'm not really sure how you can call it "low hanging fruit"
| when its overall contribution to global emissions is only 2%,
| and how hard it is to build HSR projects in the US.
|
| [1] https://www.iea.org/energy-system/transport/aviation
|
| >In 2022 aviation accounted for 2% of global energy-related CO2
| emissions
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| It's low hanging fruit in that everything involved is well
| understood with very seasoned technology and a deep amount of
| suppliers and engineering knowledge. As I said, we were doing
| this stuff in the 19th century, and have kept doing it (in
| some countries, just not NA).
|
| This sort of solution doesn't require any sort of
| technological breakthroughs, or technologies that do not
| exist.
|
| Trying to solve climate change based on working on new
| technologies that don't currently exist and may not ever
| exist seems harder to me, and yet remarkably we see people
| pointing to this approach instead of well understood
| solutions we already have.
|
| Accordingly I'd call implementing proven technology
| relatively easy. One could get started on it tomorrow.
| gruez wrote:
| >It's low hanging fruit in that everything involved is well
| understood with very seasoned technology and a deep amount
| of suppliers and engineering knowledge.
|
| >This sort of solution doesn't require any sort of
| technological breakthroughs, or technologies that do not
| exist.
|
| You can say the same for solar panels and/or batteries?
| After all, they exist right now and can be mass produced.
| Moreover the electricity grid actually accounts for a
| significant chunk of global emissions, unlike aviation. The
| only thing really stopping them is cost, but then that's
| basically the same issue that HSR has, which is
| cost/delays/political issues.
|
| >As I said, we were doing this stuff in the 19th century,
| and have kept doing it (in some countries, just not NA).
|
| "[trains] in the 19th century" aren't a serious competitor
| to airplanes in the same way that ocean liners aren't a
| serious competitor to airplanes.
| tjohns wrote:
| I'm not actually sure what the solution you're proposing is?
|
| Even if you completely eliminated air travel (with no
| replacement - which is not realistic), you'd just reduce
| emissions by a mere 2%. Not a trivial number given the scale,
| but it's far from a "solution to our climate problem". (For
| comparison, the larger transportation sector including cars is
| is 16% of emissions. Cars alone are 12%.) [1]
|
| It also turns out to be a very hard problem to solve. We don't
| have the tech to build an electric airliner yet, and given how
| hard it's been just to get a single high-speed rail line from
| SF to LA I'm not betting trains are going to be in a place to
| practically replace aviation in the US anytime in the next few
| decades.
|
| [1]: https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| Pretty much just proposing giving people some options. Right
| now they have few.
|
| Right now in North America on an enormous amount of routes
| there's pretty much no real alternative to driving or flying
| and on many others where a train does exist it's so poor in
| quality that few use it.
|
| If rail was a real option then more people would use it, and
| that would be transferring people from a relatively much
| higher CO2 emission form of transport to a lower emission
| one. That's a win.
|
| Every where I look I see data that shows that the CO2
| emissions per user are dramatically lower for train than air
| travel.
|
| Now clearly on some big routes flying is a must and train
| would be so incredibly lengthly that it would be a misery,
| but there's tons and tons of shorter routes where train would
| work really well, competing well against car/bus and air
| travel.
|
| If one wanted to get aggressive about it, once the
| infrastructure as in place, one could do what France has done
| and to ban short haul flights.
| reactordev wrote:
| I believe there was a quote from a railroad exec that Passenger
| rail traffic accounts for only 3% of the overall rail traffic in
| North America. If true, the map would be covered with Locomotives
| if freight was included (GP-40's are my favorite).
| noirbot wrote:
| That would be a curious comparison point. I feel like every
| discussion of rail in the US always turns into pointing and
| laughing at how bad the US is at rail because it's viewed
| through a passenger lens, completely ignoring how much rail is
| used for freight.
|
| My impression is that a lot of the rest of the world has much
| better passenger rail, but uses freight rail quite a bit less.
| I wonder if part of it is due to the inverse reason to the US.
| Amtrak often complains that it gets sidelined (literally)
| because of freight usage of the same track. Is freight rail
| usage in, say, Germany, lower than the US because of the
| dominance of passenger rail?
| ascar wrote:
| I assume it would be less about the dominance of passanger
| displacing freight and more about scale/distance. Germany is
| smaller than Texas (half the area). How often is it
| economical to put stuff on trains before loading them on
| trucks again for distances sub 1000km?
| Symbiote wrote:
| It's that, but there are also many lorries driving over
| several countries in Europe.
|
| Europe does have more favourable rivers, so some bulk goods
| (grain, coal, fuel, chemicals) are transported by barge.
| Other freight can go by sea.
| noirbot wrote:
| Oh sure, but the "haha the US isn't even a third world
| country with its train system" people already are ignoring
| scale/density when they're laughing at the US rail systems.
| I'm past even bothering dealing with that bad faith take.
|
| My curiosity is if the US has just traded off having better
| passenger rail for better freight rail, and if that's maybe
| a somewhat environmentally justified choice. How much more
| freight is going by truck in Europe because of the bias
| towards rail for passengers, and how does that compare to
| US people traveling by car when train would be better?
| jantissler wrote:
| That argument would only be valid if Germany was an island,
| though. But it's not. Lots of traffic coming through from
| all directions.
| jantissler wrote:
| It is actually a problem in Germany that high-speed trains
| too often share tracks with slower passenger and freight
| trains. Other countries like Japan put their high-speed
| trains on completely separate tracks.
| achileas wrote:
| This is also a problem with IIRC the Acela and other Amtrak
| routes between Boston and New York, and probably on other
| routes too.
| bluGill wrote:
| Amtrak owns most (all?) of the NEC track between New York
| and Boston. Most other routes are freight train owned and
| Amtrak has issues. Though the freights claim the issue is
| Amtrak is late for their assigned times and once that
| happens they lose priority, if Amtrak was on time they
| claim that they would let Amtrak through on time. (one
| fright that doesn't let Amtrak through on time will
| cascade to being late for all transfers, so the freights
| can overall be right and still wrong just because of the
| one exception) I don't know how to evaluate this claim.
| noirbot wrote:
| My understanding is that the freight trains now are
| really long, and there's few places to pull off the
| tracks for such long trains, so the timetables are really
| tight for when trains can pass each other.
|
| This goes to what I was talking about in my initial post.
| Right now, part of why Amtrak is bad in the US is because
| we're getting pretty efficient use of the same rails for
| freight purposes. The ways around this would either be to
| somehow legally force freight to fully be lower priority
| than passenger, which presumably raises prices/lowers
| efficiency of freight on the rails or to build a mostly
| disjoint system of rails for passenger only.
|
| The costs required to build a passenger only system is
| high and the density of the US makes me question if it
| would get the use needed to be viable. In the meantime
| then, is it net positive for the US to prioritize freight
| use over passenger? Even if we gave passenger traffic
| maximum priority, would it defer enough flights to offset
| the freight efficiency losses?
| noirbot wrote:
| It's arguably _the_ problem with any attempt at high
| speed rail in the US. Or even low-speed passenger rail.
| There 's so much freight moving on the rails that there's
| just not much slack in the system for things not running
| on time.
|
| As the parent says, the solution would be to add
| dedicated high-speed rails, but then you loop back to the
| US density issues. How fast would the Acela have to be
| for it to justify the price you'd have to charge to ever
| come close to paying back the cost to add a whole
| dedicated train line between Boston and Washington DC?
| nittanymount wrote:
| this map seems only show a portion of all running passenger
| trains ?
|
| I just drove by a train station, one train passed by, not on this
| map, haha
| naberhausj wrote:
| Was it an in-service passenger train? A freight train or out-
| of-service passenger train wouldn't show up.
|
| Sadly, there's very little data available for most trains on US
| rails. For example, there's no way (AFAIK) to see what freight
| trains are active on the network. It's a little frustrating in
| comparison with how rich our air traffic sources are.
|
| If anyone on HN knows of any richer sources for train network
| data, please let me know. I'm highly interested!
| nittanymount wrote:
| yes, it is a passenger train. which started operation within
| one year, that might be why.
| elhospitaler wrote:
| Meanwhile, Europe:
| https://mobility.portal.geops.io/world.geops.transit?layers=...
| Galacta7 wrote:
| This is pretty cool. I hope you'll add MARC and Brightline trains
| as well, as your app evolves.
| ryry wrote:
| looks like it's at least possible!
| https://www.mta.maryland.gov/marc-tracker
| https://www.transit.land/feeds/f-brightline~trails~rt
|
| I'll add them to the list and investigate; thanks!
| Galacta7 wrote:
| Thank you!
| Symbiote wrote:
| Similar for Great Britain: https://www.map.signalbox.io/
| TheArcane wrote:
| Looks like there are more non-metro trains currently running in
| London, than in all of Canada & US
| quartz wrote:
| It would be cool to see an equivalent map for freight rail.
|
| These threads always focus on the lack of passenger rail service
| in the US but ignore that the US also has one of the largest,
| safest, and most efficient freight rail systems in the world[1].
| I'd love to see it live!
|
| https://railroads.dot.gov/rail-network-development/freight-r...
| carbotaniuman wrote:
| It's quite hard to see those sadly due to how freight operators
| handle traffic - you often have to use word-of-mouth and FB
| groups to track them. I know there's a lot of railfans that
| have this data, but I'm not sure it's in a format one can
| actually use.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| http://tracker.geops.ch/
|
| https://atcsmon.software.informer.com/
|
| https://www.rail.watch/rwmon.html
| ryry wrote:
| I did a bit of a deep dive on this over the weekend and left
| feeling more confused than when I started. From what I can
| gather, outside of CN's holiday freight train, most of the
| tracking is done by community members with SDR antennas and
| Raspberry Pis. They report to centralized servers (which I've
| yet to find), and the data indicates where trains are in
| signalling blocks. I'm the least knowledgeable person on
| trains, so I don't know if this is all accurate, but that's my
| best understanding.
|
| I'd love to build some sort of service that takes this data,
| references a DB of signaling blocks, and establishes an
| estimated lat/lng - but that's a huge project of its own.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| Ya, looks like it goes to a privately run server and the
| client that accesses the data requires membership. Seems like
| there should be something like Open ADSB (aircraft) but for
| trains. I might be interested in working on something like
| that too.
| ZanyProgrammer wrote:
| PSR would like a word with your categorization. Indeed the
| Class 1s are the mortal enemy of decent intercity and commuter
| rail.
| wpm wrote:
| Define efficient. Profitable? Maybe. Good at moving an array of
| goods from anywhere in the country to anywhere else? Not so
| good.
|
| The Class I's and their obsession with operating ratio and PSR
| have strangled freight in this country for decades and pushed
| costs onto the public by means of increased truck traffic (and
| the congestion, pollution, and roadway damage that entails).
| Unless you're shipping bulk chemicals or coal, you're probably
| gonna use a truck.
| monlockandkey wrote:
| Busses would be soo much better if there was real time location
| of busses and trains that you could view on a map. Probably the
| lowest hanging fruit to pick for public transport improvement.
| jrockway wrote:
| The MTA has this: https://bustime.mta.info/#B63
|
| The CTA has this:
| https://www.ctabustracker.com/bustime/wireless/html/eta.jsp?...
|
| Those are the only two cities I've lived in, but the ability to
| track buses seems widespread to me.
| achileas wrote:
| The MBTA in Boston has this as part of their API [0].
|
| [0] https://www.mbta.com/developers/v3-api/streaming
| aFrenchy wrote:
| There is a very nice french version which has been running for
| years: https://carto.graou.info/
| hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
| Nice! Is there a way to track every freight train as well?
| MBCook wrote:
| Neat. Is there anything like this that shows freight?
| ecshafer wrote:
| This is cool, but you are missing NJ Transit which has passenger
| trains separate from LIRR and Metro North. You are also missing
| Septa and MTA internal city light rail and subway lines, which
| are technically passenger trains.
| saltminer wrote:
| If the NYC subway gets added, don't forget PATH trains!
| s-xyz wrote:
| Are you sure this is complete? There are really few trains and
| most are driving at a very low speed.
| arrowleaf wrote:
| There's also lots of track included that hasn't seen passenger
| trains in 30-50 years. The only passenger rail in Idaho is in
| the panhandle. I'm not sure if Helena has any passenger traffic
| either.
| kingsloi wrote:
| Here's one more for your list: https://southshore.etaspot.net
|
| Southshore Line - connecting Chicago, IL (Millennium Station) to
| South Bend, IN, via East Chicago, Gary, Chesterton, etc
| ryry wrote:
| Added to the list - thanks! This is different from metra yeah?
| Lammy wrote:
| Very cool. Please add SMART! https://sonomamarintrain.org/
| ryry wrote:
| added to the list - thanks!
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| This is really cool and I've already found a couple of lines that
| went further than I realized. This is going to make me use trains
| more!
|
| On that note, one feature that would be really helpful is if I
| selected a particular train, that it would show me where the
| stations are on that line. Maybe the train company would even
| give you a commission if I clicked through and bought a ticket.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| If you want to add the Chicago transit train location data, the
| API documentation and API key request form are available here:
|
| https://www.transitchicago.com/developers/traintracker/
| afhammad wrote:
| Similar but for the London Undergroound:
|
| https://traintimes.org.uk/map/tube/
| https://traintimes.org.uk/map/tube/schematic/
| mourner wrote:
| A lovely map -- thanks for using Leaflet and keeping that little
| Ukrainian flag in the corner! Probably needs an attribution for
| the map added too (looks like it's Carto with an OpenStreetMap-
| derived basemap).
| ryry wrote:
| thanks - done!
| chandlerswift wrote:
| Would you please add an OpenStreetMap attribution[0]? It looks
| like you're using OSM data via OpenRailwayMap (which also
| requires its own attribution[1]) and Carto basemaps (which I'm
| not terribly familiar with, but at first glance appear to be
| based on OSM data[2])---each of which detail their respective
| attribution requirements.
|
| Leaflet makes this incredibly simple; just add the suggested text
| to the attribution field when you initialize the layers:
| L.tileLayer('https://{s}.basemaps.cartocdn.com/light_all/{z}/{x}/
| {y}{r}.png', { maxZoom: 19,
| attribution: '' // here! }).addTo(map);
| var railwayOverlay = L.tileLayer('https://{s}.tiles.openrailwayma
| p.org/standard/{z}/{x}/{y}.png', { attribution:
| '', // and here! }).addTo(map);
|
| [0]: https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright
|
| [1]: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OpenRailwayMap/API
|
| [2]:
| https://drive.google.com/file/d/1P7bhSE-N9iegI398QYDjKeVhnbS...
| via https://carto.com/legal
| sz4kerto wrote:
| We have something similar in Hungary:
|
| http://vonatinfo.mav-start.hu/
|
| Pretty cool, it's a shame that the actual (state-owned)
| trainlines are in shambles.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| For Austria you can see them all here: https://anachb.vor.at/
| ("Kartenoptionen" -> "Livemap" -> "Alle einblenden"). Even covers
| buses, subways, trams and local trains as well as public
| transport ships.
| cattown wrote:
| Super cool! I love this. Makes me yearn for a day when this map
| is way more full of activity.
|
| Just a little feedback: the color for Amtrak and for Chicago's
| Metra trains are so similar it's hard to see at a glance where
| the Amtrak runs are amongst the many Metras that are out at a
| given time. Would be awesome to differentiate those marker colors
| a bit more.
|
| Very cool! Didn't know this was even technically possible with
| the available data feeds. Great work!
| ryry wrote:
| this bugged me too. I tried to keep the colours respective to
| the company logos. Any other recommendations for a metra
| colour?
| eclo wrote:
| love the UI! So easy to understand
| nilsbunger wrote:
| It's sad that even great potential routes like SF->LA aren't
| accessible by train, and we don't seem to have the state capacity
| to build HSR there.
|
| I was just in Japan, and took the Shinkansen from Tokyo to Kyoto,
| which is a similar distance as SF to LA.
|
| That train:
|
| - runs every 10 minutes -- if you miss one, just take the next
| one!
|
| - takes 2.5 hours travel time
|
| - starts and ends in city centers on both ends.
|
| - has better legroom and wider seats than economy
|
| - free, fast Wifi on board, your cell signal still works, and you
| can use your computer the whole trip.
|
| - has no security or boarding hassle. You can show up 5 minutes
| before departure and just get on.
|
| - has no luggage limitations AFAICT
|
| It's faster and far less stressful than flying SF to LA, with the
| security and boarding hassles, Ubers on both ends, and cramped
| onboard conditions.
| vinniepukh wrote:
| Same experience on my first Japan trip earlier this year. Why
| can't we have nice things over here?
| pphysch wrote:
| Culturally, in current USA we would rather have lots of $10B
| networth John Galts than lots of $10B infrastructure
| projects.
| wongarsu wrote:
| But if there were nice things then other people would profit
| from that too. Especially _those_ people [gestures vaguely].
| /s
|
| In the country of individualism, options that are better but
| would also help other people who haven't directly contributed
| to it aren't very popular.
| vinniepukh wrote:
| it's funny that there instances of collectivism in the US
| when there's either a monetary incentive or the desire to
| keep the "others" out
|
| for example, the restrictive residential permitting systems
| in many urban areas, which just happens to be another thing
| Japan gets right
| mbb70 wrote:
| Agreed, Boston to NYC on Amtrak is only marginally better
| (sometimes) than flying and thats only ~200 miles
| lmm wrote:
| I like the Shinkansen but it's also very expensive - that
| journey is Y=14,170 one way, and the discounts for return
| tickets or advance booking are vanishingly small. Even with the
| incredibly weak yen I can see same-day SF-LA flights cheaper
| than that.
| metadat wrote:
| (Y=14,170 is approximately $95USD)
| eldaisfish wrote:
| Do your flight costs include parking, the costs of getting to
| and from the airports, the value of your time, the mental
| hassle of airport security theatre, the costs of additional
| luggage and so on?
|
| If not, it's not a fair comparison.
| CitrusFruits wrote:
| Tickets from SFO to LAX can be cheaper, but that's usually
| not for optimal times. Sure you can get a round trip ticket
| for $80, but you'll be leaving at 6 in the morning or
| something like that. Additionally, you'll have to go through
| security, not be able to bring your own beverage (or water),
| sit on a much smaller seat, and not have Wi-Fi.
|
| In other words, I think $95 one way on an extremely punctual
| bullet train with high availability is a steal.
| resolutebat wrote:
| This is starting to change, the discounts for early booking
| and/or slower trains can be up to 50% these days:
| https://livejapan.com/en/in-tohoku/in-pref-miyagi/in-
| sendai_...
| lmm wrote:
| They have a tiny number of those 50% discounts that are
| always sold out even if you apply as soon as ticket sales
| open, IME. And note that even then they're only on the less
| popular lines - you'll never see a discount like that for
| Tokyo-Kyoto.
| robin_reala wrote:
| The Shinkansen pitches itself as broadly price competitive
| with flights, but more convenient and more comfortable. In
| that sense it's not expensive, it's greater value.
| brnt wrote:
| Cheaper for the same seat size, allowed luggage amount?
| brandall10 wrote:
| I just spent the summer traveling Europe, visited 17 cities
| where 14 were by rail. 3 were day trips.
|
| Got so used to how easy it it to literally walk into a station
| and be on a train in a few minutes that I almost missed
| Turin->Paris when a tram to the station was five minutes behind
| schedule. Average connection was 5 hours of travel time, but
| factoring in getting to/from the airport, early arrival, etc,
| it was mostly a wash in any time saved. All in all, total cost
| for transport was about $900 (not including going/coming back
| from Europe, which obviously exceeded that).
| chroma wrote:
| High speed rail between San Francisco and Los Angeles isn't
| economically viable. California HSR will cost at least $30
| billion to construct and California's own estimates claim it
| will cost $700-$874 million per year to operate.[1] Around four
| million passengers fly between SF and LA every year. Assuming
| every single one of them takes the train instead of flying,
| you're looking at $175-$218 per ticket just to pay for
| operations. If you wanted the project to pay for itself in 20
| years, you'd have to charge $550-$600 per ticket. For
| comparison, airfare between the two cities starts at $80 round
| trip. Also the train will take 3 hours while flying takes 1.5
| hours. Even including the time it takes to get to/from the
| airport and get through security, flying is faster.
|
| 1. https://hsr.ca.gov/wp-
| content/uploads/docs/programs/san_jose...
| LordShredda wrote:
| That's the upfront cost and profit, but think of the economic
| opportunities created once people can travel between the two
| largest cities in California with no hassle and regularly.
| resolutebat wrote:
| Funny how trains are expected to be profitable from day 1,
| but you can drive a car from SF to LA and not pay a cent for
| the highway infra that costs billions to build and upkeep.
|
| Also, in what world can you reliably get from central LA/SF
| to LAX/SFO and through checkin & TSA in 45 min each?
| chroma wrote:
| I didn't say anything about roads, but it's not true that
| roads are unprofitable. Roads are paid for by fuel taxes
| and vehicle registration fees. California's gas taxes raise
| $8 billion per year. The state's registration and licensing
| fees collect another $12 billion per year. The state spends
| $18 billion per year on Caltrans, meaning that vehicles
| provide $2 billion in revenue for other state programs.
|
| BART takes 30 minutes to get from Civic Center to SFO. Even
| without TSA pre-check, it takes less than 15 minutes to get
| through security. If you get through security 15 minutes
| before the plane leaves, that's 2.5 hours total travel time
| to LAX. From the same place in SF it takes 20-25 minutes to
| get to 4th & King. Let's say the train leaves 15 minutes
| after you arrive at the station. Then it will take 2 hours
| and 40 minutes to get to Union Station in LA. Total travel
| time: 3.25 hours. And again, the train cost is 5-10x that
| of a flight.
| akprasad wrote:
| Assuming this is all true, what then makes the Japanese
| Shinkansen economically viable?
| epivosism wrote:
| They already have the land rights, favorable social
| environment for construction, more compliant population,
| less local/more federal legal zoning and land use power,
| more federal level direction to get things done, higher
| rate of engineers in population.
|
| That CA is bad at all of those makes it expensive and hard
|
| In addition to very low competence levels in gov't compared
| to Japan due to many factors. Sure Japan has financial
| corruption in construction but it's a known system and they
| build things treating it as a tax. In CA there are many
| more parties who all attempt to hold construction projects
| hostage.
| resolutebat wrote:
| Those factors aligned for the original Shinkansen when it
| was built in the sixties; now, not so much.
|
| The maglev Chuo Shinkansen, originally meant to be
| finished by 2030 or so, has been stuck in limbo for
| several years now because the prefecture of Shizuoka
| refuses to issue the necessary permits.
|
| https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14718670
| arlattimore wrote:
| I expect one of the biggest factors is population density.
|
| California has a land area of 165,000mi^2. Japan has a land
| area of 145,000mi^2.
|
| California population is 39M. Japan population is 125M.
| chroma wrote:
| The distance between SF and LA (350 miles) is 50% greater
| than the distance between Tokyo and Kyoto (227 miles),
| making the time tradeoff favor trains to planes. The two
| cities are much bigger than SF and LA, so many more people
| travel between the two cities (85 million per year). Also
| Japan can build and maintain rail much cheaper than the US.
| ehaliewicz2 wrote:
| Many people who ride it have one of various train passes
| that reduce the cost, or have a plan with work that covers
| it. I usually use a JR pass, it's pretty expensive without
| it.
| arbitel wrote:
| well if you're assuming the same number of passengers - given
| the logistics and hassles of air travel, one is likely more
| inclined to travel with hassle-free HSR, not to mention the
| secondary economic benefits
| picohen wrote:
| The Shinkansen is FASCINATING. I recently went and was amazed
| by Tokyo's infrastructure and how they have a city under a
| city. The fact that there is a bullet train at tokyo station
| every 10 mins or so is mind blowing
|
| I went into a Youtube rabbit hole the other night...
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdJwAUdvlik
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFpG3yf3Rxk
| resolutebat wrote:
| Small correction: every 6 minutes, not 10! And each train has
| 16 (sixteen) carriages and can seat over 1,300 people.
| hifromLA wrote:
| The HSR route between San Francisco and Los Angeles is under
| construction. It's not gone perfectly but it is starting to
| pick up momentum.
| achileas wrote:
| What was behind the decision to include just commuter rail and
| long-distance passenger rail, but not local rapid transit? Is it
| a resource issue drawing that many vehicles? I love this map, but
| I'd love to see it with more modes of transport.
| ryry wrote:
| mostly just because this was a weekend project and I needed to
| draw the line somewhere. I'm not necessarily opposed to it, but
| I reckon it'll take a good amount more time.
| geniium wrote:
| The most shocking for me is ... the small amount of trains on
| that map
| gpvos wrote:
| Netherlands: https://treinposities.nl/ , and for buses
| https://busposities.nl/kaart (zoom in).
| firebaze wrote:
| Kind of underwhelming. Superb work, but the average distance
| between trains is, like, at least 500 miles? This is what the
| opposite of public transportation looks like, unfortunately.
|
| What would that map look like if even 5% of the annual military
| budget of the US would be invested in trains?
| s9g wrote:
| Looks like the Alaska Railroad doesn't have any publicly
| available location data on their site -
| https://www.alaskarailroad.com/
|
| Which is a shame, because I actually worked on a live train map
| internally when I was an intern there a decade ago.
| pcdsl wrote:
| Here's a cool one for Tokyo in 3D: https://minitokyo3d.com/
| howenterprisey wrote:
| How very convenient! I'm on this map. My train is in the right
| position, but I don't think the name is quite right: I'm on the
| Silver Star but it's labelled as the Northeast Regional.
| Excellent project, though, thanks for posting.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-11-27 23:00 UTC)