[HN Gopher] Live Map of Swiss Trains
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Live Map of Swiss Trains
Author : ano-ther
Score : 141 points
Date : 2024-01-06 14:32 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (maps.vasile.ch)
(TXT) w3m dump (maps.vasile.ch)
| lqet wrote:
| Does this have real-time positions, or only scheduled positions?
|
| Personally I prefer TRAVIC, which has nearly 100% real-time
| coverage for Switzerland and also includes busses and trams:
|
| https://travic.app/?z=9&x=921422.5&y=5949724.5
| zigman1 wrote:
| It says it is "an animation based on the official timetables of
| the Swiss Federal Railways(SBB) network". To my understanding
| its only scheduled positions.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| When I was there in 2001, an announcement apologized for a
| train being 30 seconds late. Scheduled and actual were
| shockingly close.
| terminous wrote:
| To counterpoint: in the height of summer tourist season
| 2023, I spent a week in Switzerland taking trains and
| booked several supersaver tickets in advance with 15-30
| minute connections. I was told stories of the efficiency of
| Swiss trains, and that I could book 5-10 min connections
| with no problems, but chose to be safe and do 15-30 mins.
| Well, I missed 3 of these connections due to delays on the
| incoming train. I had to queue at the ticket booth to get
| it endorsed for the next train.
| altano wrote:
| There's no need for anecdotes as the data is published.
| Only ~1% of connections are missed: https://reporting.sbb
| .ch/punctuality?=&years=1,4,5,6,7&scrol...
|
| ~93% of trains are punctual with a VERY strict definition
| for punctual: within 3 minutes of the scheduled time.
|
| If you experienced worse, you were in an unlucky minority
| of people.
| belter wrote:
| What your link shows is that train punctuality in 2022
| was 92.5 %. That is shocking bad. Back in 2018 at least
| 10 countries were doing better than Switzerland.
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/1255048/punctuality-
| regi...
| eep_social wrote:
| Can't tell from that link but historically the Swiss
| punctuality standard is three minutes where other
| countries use five or more, Japan being the notable
| exception.
| RealStickman_ wrote:
| I'm not sure how Statista got their info, but most other
| countries define "late" as being more than 5 minutes
| behind schedule. In Switzeland that limit is lower with
| only 3 minutes not counting as late.
| belter wrote:
| Here is a recent perspective.
|
| [1] "Why Swiss trains are less punctual -- and what is
| being done about it" -
| https://www.thelocal.ch/20220110/why-swiss-trains-are-
| less-p...
|
| Once more a variation on how to lie with statistics... It
| does not matter if the overall statistics show a somewhat
| high value, mostly driven by predicable and frequent
| travels between Cantons in the mountains, where there is
| maybe just one track. What matters is the experience of
| the majority of commuters on urban centers. From [1] in
| 2022, the year of most recent statistics.
|
| "The punctuality values in the last three months on some
| major intercity routes are below the threshold:
|
| Zurich HB - Bern: 73.5 percent of on-time arrivals and
| departures
|
| Lausanne - Geneva: 71.5 percent
|
| Basel - Zurich: 67.5 percent
|
| Zug - Zurich HB: 76.1 percent
|
| Olten - Lucerne: 66.7 percent "
| palata wrote:
| If your train is not too late, the connection will wait
| for you. If it can't wait, they will tell you about the
| alternative.
|
| My experience in Germany is that the connection does not
| wait, and you just end up having to find your way
| yourself. It's a bit weird when not used to it, and it
| seems to mean that you can basically take whatever train
| you want that you believe goes towards your goal.
| terminous wrote:
| > you can basically take whatever train you want that you
| believe goes towards your goal.
|
| That's a big difference between Germany and Switzerland.
| Full fare tickets let you take any route, but reasonably
| priced tickets are specific to a schedule of trains. If
| there is a delay causing a misconnect, you have to queue
| at the ticket window to get it endorsed for a later
| specific train. And my ticket inspectors on the train
| seriously inspected the endorsement each time.
| Foobar8568 wrote:
| Maybe in 2001...Nowadays 3min delays are still considered
| as on time as per SBB : "A train is considered on time if
| it reaches its destination with less than three minutes'
| delay."
| sschueller wrote:
| When working with the data they generally only provide live
| data for trips that are off schedule (a deff feed) as the
| scheduled data might as well be live.
| bbu wrote:
| Nice story but that has never happened. Delays are
| announced when >=3min are expected.
| sonar_un wrote:
| I was just on a train from Paris to Geneve and was looking for
| a map just like this!
| ano-ther wrote:
| Timetable interpolation it seems:
| https://github.com/vasile/transit-map
|
| Thanks for the Travic link.
| vasile wrote:
| Thanks for featuring, author here. This is the first version
| of the #swisstrains webmap which I've made 17yrs ago, it
| still runs for historical reasons, it used to fetch also live
| delays but the position of the trains were still
| interpolated, using the average speed between the two
| timetable stops.
|
| The other clones are more or less using same technique, swiss
| transport agencies are not (yet) offering live position of
| the trains / vehicles, only the actual delays measured at
| stations.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| >> Does this have real-time positions, or only scheduled
| positions?
|
| Such an important question! One of my pet peeves with the NYC
| Metro Timings app is that it sneakily presents scheduled
| arrivals as real-time. The best example of this is which it
| shows trainings happily running/arriving on lines that are
| actually shut down for construction!
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| I don't know about NYC, but in my territory the public
| transit authority shares live and real-time data with Google.
| It's exposed in Maps with a very nice interface, such that I
| don't even need to install the buggy, bespoke app provided by
| the transit service.
|
| They also have an SMS query service which seemed to always be
| inaccurate or lying. I stopped using it, it was so
| unreliable. But Google Maps can tell me exactly where the
| next bus/train is, how much delayed, how crowded it is,
| whether security is on board or not, because Google polls
| actual passengers about these parameters.
| petee wrote:
| I love that you can see the cars when zoomed, wasn't expecting
| that
| politelemon wrote:
| I couldn't see the train cars for most of them just a few of
| the red 'IC' ones. I wonder what the criteria is to show cars.
| petee wrote:
| There are a number of tunnels, though the dim red track lines
| didn't always show up when i was zoomed
| i_am_not_groot wrote:
| They even show the marker when it passes by within Google
| street view !!
| politelemon wrote:
| That's neat it shows some gondola/cable cars too.
| hubraumhugo wrote:
| It's hard for foreigners to grasp that our comprehensive public
| transport network connects even the most remote areas of
| Switzerland. My parents are living on a farm in the countryside
| and still I can get there easily by train and bus. If I need some
| more flexibility (moving stuff, skiing, ...), there are electric
| car rentals available at any major train stations. It's my ideal
| version of mobility.
|
| PS: The Swiss federal railways also have a large set of open data
| to enable such cool projects: https://data.sbb.ch/pages/home/
| drunner wrote:
| One of my favorite YouTubers, not just bikes, did a video last
| year that highlighted this:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muPcHs-E4qc
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Compare me visiting my parents who live in a "remote" town of
| in BC about 200km from Vancouver. After a ferry and a bus I
| found myself outside a grocery store asking strangers for a
| ride north (no taxi service). A kind soul drove me to the
| highway turnoff. I walked the last five miles. That's what most
| of North America is like once you step slightly outside of the
| major cities: No car, no get there.
| pnw wrote:
| Is that surprising given that you could fit over 200
| Switzerlands into Canada and another 200 into the US? BC
| alone is over 20 times the size of Switzerland. Cars are the
| best possible option in that case surely?
| sandworm101 wrote:
| That is correct. Cars are certainly the best option in many
| circumstances, even from an environmental standpoint. The
| reason I couldn't get even a taxi was that the taxi company
| didn't want to drive 30miles just to pick me up, then drive
| maybe 60miles back after dropping me off. When a small
| population is spread over a large area, personal vehicles
| become the most efficient means. That is a large part of
| why Alaska has the highest rate of private _aircraft_
| ownership on the planet. BC rides the literally middle
| ground between Alaska and the densely populated southern
| states.
| alamortsubite wrote:
| Comparing all of the U.S. or Canada is meaningless, but
| when you look at regions with similar population densities,
| then yes, it is surprising. Switzerland only has about half
| the density of the U.S. East Coast, for example.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| And in addition Switzerland has challenging terrain with
| hills and mountains all over, making train service
| complicated and even busses non-trivial sometimes
| ant6n wrote:
| Pn the other hand, the geography forces people to live in
| valleys. so population is effectively distributed along
| corridors --- very conducive to being served by rail and
| bus lines.
| panick21_ wrote:
| The size in itself of is a meaningless metric. I'm baffled
| that comment like this still get made even on HN. I guess
| this must be that American just have such a fundamentally
| distorted view of public transport.
|
| The area of Greater Toronto Area has far denser population
| then Switzerland with far worse public transport. So by any
| rational metric it should dominate Switzerland in public
| transport modal shares and convenience. But it doesn't. So
| when looking for explanations, we need to look deeper.
|
| Looking at BC, Vancouver is a city of 675,218 people. The
| Metro area is 2.463 million. Calgary metro is 1.4 million.
| Edmonton is another metro area of 1.3 million. And the
| distance between Edmonton and Calgary isn't even very far.
| Those are 3 cities that are bigger or comparable to Zurich.
|
| I'm not suggesting the population of 'Liard River' of 100
| people in the north of BC should have a high speed train to
| Vancouver. Of course BC as a whole will never have Swiss
| like public Transit. But if you actually look at where
| people live, take into account the particular details of
| the location, you can design a public transport system that
| is useful for people.
|
| But the comment said '200km' from Vancouver. And he also
| said there was highway 5 miles from the parents house. So
| somehow they seemed to think it was reasonable to able to
| build a highway. Highways are expensive infrastructure, and
| usually you don't built them the middle of nowhere. So it
| seems from the comment we are not talking about some place
| that is at least between two places the somebody connected
| with a highway. If you have enough money for a highway, you
| can finance a bus route along it. Most people do live
| reasonable close together and not just a single house in
| the wilderness.
|
| If we look at the density map:
|
| https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2006/as-
| sa/97...
|
| It seems to me that Vancouver is perfectly placed to have
| an amazing transport system connecting its city to its
| metro and its metro to the more outlining towns and
| villages. There is no reason the great Vancouver area
| couldn't have Swiss like public transport very every
| village
|
| Then you have a higher speed train connecting Vancouver to
| Calgary to Edmonton and all the larger towns in between.
| Then have regional trains or buses going out from that
| trunk connecting smaller towns and villages. I suspect
| these town were all originally built because there was
| railroad there.
|
| So yes, BC as a whole is big and densely populated. But
| that metric alone is meaningless when designing a public
| transport system that can meaningfully serve the
| population. Even if you think 'cars are the best option',
| that's no reason not have have decent public transport.
| Switzerland, has lots of people in cars and its a very
| viable option. But despite that, it also has other good
| types of transport. Sometimes its nice not to have only one
| option, specially for people who for many reasons can't
| simply drive.
|
| This reoccurring attitude of well its a big country so why
| even try is so damaging. As if Canada being big had
| anything to do with why Toronto street cars are a
| abomination of planning and operations. You have a bit more
| of a point in regards to BC but even then its wrong for the
| majority of people.
| bombcar wrote:
| The cost of building a highway compared to the cost of
| running even a "once daily" bus service may not be
| exactly the ratio you think it is, especially if the bus
| would normally run empty.
|
| A highway is a one-time cost, amortized over many uses, a
| bus is an ongoing cost.
|
| It would be much easier to "stick a seat" on some
| government vehicle that already does the trip regularly,
| allowing a passenger or two to ride along with the mail
| truck.
| currymj wrote:
| a lot of the more remote Swiss bus services are
| "PostAuto" and got started exactly like this -- giving
| passengers a ride on existing mail carriages. Now they
| run actual buses along the same routes (which are still
| bright yellow like the mail trucks).
| bombcar wrote:
| This is the way to do it - solve the problem, even if
| "inefficient/complex" and then as things grow, adapt.
|
| Regular rural route busses used to be common in the US
| before everyone got rich enough to own a car.
| ahtihn wrote:
| > A highway is a one-time cost
|
| Not really, especially in places that regularly
| experience freezing and snow.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Highways are more important to business than passengers.
| That government bus isn't going to be hauling the logs,
| gravel, and any other resources that are the lifeblood of
| BCs economy.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| Talking about the overall size of Canada is dodging the
| issue. The scale of the country does provide a
| justification for not being able to access any arbitrary
| spot across Canada (or the US) using public transport, but
| the previous commenter is talking about accessing a town a
| mere 200 km away from British Columbia's largest city and
| urban agglomeration -- 3rd largest in Canada as a whole.
|
| How many Switzerlands can you fit within a 200 km drive
| from Vancouver [0]? My eyeball guess is that the area is
| half the area of Switzerland, maybe less than a third if we
| exclude US territory covered in the map. And what's the
| population density of that area? Again, ignoring the US,
| just counting Vancouver's [1] and Victoria's [2]
| metropolitan areas alone adds up to 3,000,000 inhabitants
| (more than a third of the population of the whole of
| Switzerland), so this area's population density is very
| likely to be similar or even greater than that of
| Switzerland as a whole.
|
| [0] https://www.smappen.com/app/map/802yt
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vancouver
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria,_British_Columbia
| panick21_ wrote:
| Usually locations for skiing are very well connected. Trains
| that go to popular skiing locations of have places to store
| your equipment. There are also bikes available at most
| stations.
|
| > It's my ideal version of mobility.
|
| It can decently be a lot better in a lot of ways. But we have
| to not just complain but try to objectively criticizes so we
| can continue to improve.
|
| I would like to actually do high-speed rail. Switzerland did
| really well improving on InterCity trains and got more people
| to use them. But that became almost a mantra of 'speed doesn't
| matter'. The actual mantra is 'not as fast as possible, but as
| fast as required'.
|
| This was correct and with the Rail2035 plan, we are going
| further in that direction. Many InterCity trains go from every
| 30 min to every 15 min. Basically turning most of the country
| into an S-Bahn like system.
|
| See here if you are interested: https://sbb-
| step2035.ch/de/personenverkehr/
|
| But I think beyond that we should seriously consider a totally
| new high-speed line, right across the major population centers.
| That would not just make rail competitive with driving, but
| beat driving with a big stick. Also this would free up a huge
| amount of capacity from the existing lines and allow things
| like 15min regional and inter-regional travel. Plus it would
| increase cargo capacity.
|
| Sadly its currently not in the Rail2050 plan, but there are
| people pushing for it.
|
| Further, I think we can do a lot, a lot better in terms of
| biking. Compared to the Dutch we are utterly primitive in
| integrating biking in the larger transport network. In the
| Netherlands they have figured out that bikes are the optimal
| feeder system into the rail network and have taken huge
| advantage of that. Switzerland needs to do so much better in
| that.
|
| Frankly, I think its really useful. I was able to perfectly
| travel around on Christmas. Getting to family in different
| parts of the country, no problem.
| palata wrote:
| > That would not just make rail competitive with driving, but
| beat driving with a big stick.
|
| Between major population centers, I believe it already beats
| driving by a long shot... I personally don't think it has to
| be faster: as long as I can work in the train, it's fine if
| it takes 90min instead of 75.
|
| > Further, I think we can do a lot, a lot better in terms of
| biking.
|
| Yes!
| Stevvo wrote:
| Replace "foreigners" with "Americans". Functional public
| transport is not that special; most countries have it. The main
| difference in Switzerland is the hostility of the terrain to
| building infrastructure.
|
| If your parents lived on a farm in rural China, you would say
| the same thing.
| Tainnor wrote:
| Swiss public transport is IMHO special in three respects: a)
| density of the network, b) frequency (even remote areas get a
| bus an hour), c) punctuality.
|
| I'm not saying no other country can match this (I haven't
| been everywhere), but at least Germany or Italy can't.
| Peanuts99 wrote:
| It is bloody pricey though. Especially for those without a
| Swisspass.
| bwanab wrote:
| And the best part is how reliable and timely the trains and
| buses are. As a foreigner living there I commuted by bus into
| Geneva from a suburb. I don't think my bus was ever more than 1
| minute late - and this was in the middle of its run. I hate to
| compare that to my wife's commute here in Boston....
| vasile wrote:
| Thanks for the link, author of the website here. For this
| particular #swisstrains project I was using derived GTFS
| dataset form this one
| https://opentransportdata.swiss/en/dataset/timetable-54-2024...
| - this portal contains public transport data from all swiss
| transport operators (not only SBB)
| mahrain wrote:
| Dutch trains live: https://treinposities.nl/
| tibbon wrote:
| Something seems inaccurate here, perhaps data corruption? There's
| no way so many trains could be in such a small space.
|
| Signed,
|
| An American
| rspoerri wrote:
| http://tracker.geops.ch/ shows way more connections such as
| busses, trains or international traffic.
| mvexel wrote:
| There's one for The Netherlands as well ->
| https://en.treinposities.nl/. Relies on an open API so there's
| bound to be others. This one is good because it has some live
| webcam links on the map as well. At least one of the live cams
| use YouTube as a streaming platform and have active rail nerd
| communities chatting and answering questions, like
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UfHjV-oUmE
| belter wrote:
| Does seem to have some latency, as I just saw two trains
| crossing on
|
| https://bouw.live/puls-amsterdam/
|
| with no corresponding trains on the map.
| SushiHippie wrote:
| If the timestamp in the top right corner is correct, then the
| livestream lags ~1/2 hour behind.
| belter wrote:
| You are correct, its 30 min behind. A _live_ camera that is
| not live. Makes total sense :-)
| Philpax wrote:
| Live map of Tokyo trains: https://minitokyo3d.com/
| neuronic wrote:
| For muotiple European countries:
| https://mobility.portal.geops.io/de/world.geops.transit?laye...
| thriftwy wrote:
| https://rasp.yandex.ru/map/trains/#center=37.63999999999997%...
| for the coverage further East. It may be partially relying on
| timetables and not live data, though.
| trollied wrote:
| I was surprised how good the Amtrak one is:
| https://www.amtrak.com/track-your-train.html
| blcknight wrote:
| That is cool but the number of trains is so depressing.
| tetris11 wrote:
| As usual, I am still forever confused by whatever the hell
| Lorrach is.
|
| German? Technically yes. Swiss? Technically no.
|
| Does it constantly play different cards depending on
| infrastructure projects within the county? Oh you bet.
| steve1977 wrote:
| It's definitely German.
|
| But we also have a German train station in Switzerland, so
| there's that ;)
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basel_Badischer_Bahnhof
| johncoltrane wrote:
| Fr France: https://carto.graou.info/
| kordlessagain wrote:
| Just watched a train leave and another arrive at Untervaz
| Bahnhof: https://www.rhb.ch/en/interactive/rhb-livestream. The
| live map showed it leaving before it did on the cam, and has a
| timestamp that is closer to my computer than the live map. They
| are maybe 30-45 seconds apart.
|
| That stream page randomly shows different stations and ads, so
| you have to time it right!
| orenlindsey wrote:
| The animations are nice.
| peterbraden wrote:
| Looking at this from a swiss train. It seems to be 10-15 minutes
| out of date compared to GPS.
| konspence wrote:
| 'Live' implies realtime data, this is based on schedules.
| beebeepka wrote:
| "they are the same picture"
| bad_alloc wrote:
| Here's most of Europe, but mostly based on interpolated schedule
| data:
|
| https://travic.app/?z=6&x=1652866.9&y=6336146.8&l=osm_standa...
|
| It's also great to see the utter mess that DB organization is. I
| found their live tracking on [1], but it can only be ordered as a
| product to embed somewhere, they don't show it on their site.
| Then there is the random https://www.bahnhof.de/, which seems to
| collect information about train stations. But if you want to
| schedule your trip or buy a ticket, you'd better get the DB
| Navigator app, which is not available as a web version. FML.
|
| [1] https://www.dbinfrago.com/web
| vegasbrianc wrote:
| Switzerland had a similar open source solution a few years ago.
| Unfortunately, the train operator forced it to shutdown as it was
| scraping the data from the timetables. Not sure how the new
| solution works but I hope it sticks around.
| harryf wrote:
| I used to work at https://www.local.ch/en and know Vasile, the
| guy that built this map.
|
| The situation with trains (and data) in Switzerland is
| complicated as each Kanton has it's own rail network. In 2016
| the SBB _finally_ started making it's train timetable
| officially available (some info on that here -
| https://www.itmagazine.ch/artikel/64746/Open-Data-Plattform_...
| ) which is I believe what this map uses, after shutting down
| people scraping the data.
|
| That said, what has always irked me is they gave the data to
| Google as far back as 2007, while refusing to make anything
| available for sites like local.ch and map.search.ch (who's map
| was partly basis for the original Google maps). Refusing may be
| a leading term but certainly there was no help given to local
| Swiss companies, while Google already had the train times in
| maps.
| vasile wrote:
| Thanks for featuring, author of the website here. This is the
| same version as the one I've first made back in 2006, the main
| dataset is a derived GTFS dataset from swiss raw timetables
| (HRDF) [1].
|
| The position of the trains are interpolated, based on the
| departure / arrival times of stop times and is using the average
| speed. I've used to have also an hourly updater for the delays
| using the GTFS-RT dataset [2] but is gone due to lack of time.
| ATM there is no official dataset to give the live position of the
| vehicles, all the other websites are just interpolating positions
| based on the time delays.
|
| The website still runs as hobby project, is not meant to be taken
| as source of truth for actual position of the trains, though I
| get many requests from trainspotters and photographers asking me
| for such feature :)
|
| And for some routes you can sit and enjoy watching the route
| displaying actual train units [3] more a simcity-like feature :)
|
| [1]
| https://opentransportdata.swiss/en/dataset/timetable-54-2024...
|
| [2] https://opentransportdata.swiss/en/cookbook/gtfs-rt/
|
| [3] https://maps.vasile.ch/transit-
| sbb/?hms=10:00:00&vehicle_nam...
| jpalomaki wrote:
| Switch to satellite view, zoom into some red train dot and you
| can actually see the train there, running on the tracks. Pretty
| neat trick!
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