Live Map of Swiss Trains

https://maps.vasile.ch/transit-sbb/

by ano-ther • 3 years ago

155 84 3 years ago

maps.vasile.ch

lqet• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

When I was there in 2001, an announcement apologized for a train being 30 seconds late. Scheduled and actual were shockingly close.

sonar_un• 3 years ago

I was just on a train from Paris to Genève and was looking for a map just like this!

ano-ther• 3 years ago

Timetable interpolation it seems: https://github.com/vasile/transit-map

Thanks for the Travic link.

vasile3• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

> 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• 3 years ago

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.

petee2• 3 years ago

I love that you can see the cars when zoomed, wasn't expecting that

politelemon2• 3 years ago

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.

petee2• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

They even show the marker when it passes by within Google street view !!

politelemon2• 3 years ago

That's neat it shows some gondola/cable cars too.

hubraumhugo• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

One of my favorite YouTubers, not just bikes, did a video last year that highlighted this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muPcHs-E4qc

sandworm1013• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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?

panick21_8• 3 years ago

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.

palata3• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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.

bwanab• 3 years ago

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....

vasile3• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

Dutch trains live: https://treinposities.nl/

tibbon• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

http://tracker.geops.ch/ shows way more connections such as busses, trains or international traffic.

mvexel• 3 years ago

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

belter4• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

If the timestamp in the top right corner is correct, then the livestream lags ~1/2 hour behind.

Philpax• 3 years ago

Live map of Tokyo trains: https://minitokyo3d.com/

neuronic• 3 years ago

For muötiple European countries: https://mobility.portal.geops.io/de/world.geops.transit?laye...

thriftwy• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

I was surprised how good the Amtrak one is: https://www.amtrak.com/track-your-train.html

blcknight• 3 years ago

That is cool but the number of trains is so depressing.

tetris11• 3 years ago

As usual, I am still forever confused by whatever the hell Lörrach is.

German? Technically yes. Swiss? Technically no.

Does it constantly play different cards depending on infrastructure projects within the county? Oh you bet.

steve1977• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

Fr France: https://carto.graou.info/

kordlessagain• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

The animations are nice.

peterbraden• 3 years ago

Looking at this from a swiss train. It seems to be 10-15 minutes out of date compared to GPS.

konspence• 3 years ago

'Live' implies realtime data, this is based on schedules.

beebeepka• 3 years ago

"they are the same picture"

bad_alloc• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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.

eep_social2• 3 years ago

This doesn’t match my experience. Google requires feeds to be in a specific format [1] but the feed is push from the agency. When I was intimate with the details, agencies were strongly encouraged to publish these feeds at a public url. There were all kinds of things about the format itself that might not have worked for the good folks at local.ch but access to the data is not likely to have been a problem.

[1] https://developers.google.com/transit/gtfs

vasile3• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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!

Live Map of Swiss Trains

Related Stories