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Live map of SF MUNI
- peter_l_downs 13y agoThis is fantastic! Althought the "MUNI" marker is nice, I think a smaller icon (maybe with a direction?) would make it easier to use.
- kijeda 13y agoThis map would be more useful if instead of each bus being represented by a nondescript MUNI logo, that it was an icon that contained the route number. As it stands it appears the only way to get useful information is to hover over each logo to work out what it represents.
- steffan 13y agoDo you have any examples of how you're populating Firebase from the SFMuni APIs?
- thecodemonkey 13y agoWould love to see this as well.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- masonhensley 13y agoI think this is these are his data sources: agency list: http://webservices.nextbus.com/service/publicXMLFeed?command=agencyList http://webservices.nextbus.com/service/publicXMLFeed?command... route list: http://webservices.nextbus.com/service/publicXMLFeed?command=routeList&a=sf-muni http://webservices.nextbus.com/service/publicXMLFeed?command... vehic location : http://webservices.nextbus.com/service/publicXMLFeed?command=vehicleLocations&a=sf-muni&t=1362432121000 http://webservices.nextbus.com/service/publicXMLFeed?command... ===== Check out line 37: https://github.com/firebase/firebus/blob/gh-pages/nextbus/firebus-populator.js https://github.com/firebase/firebus/blob/gh-pages/nextbus/fi...
- steffan 13y agoThanks! I missed that on the first pass
- Macsenour 13y agoHow about a color change if it's on time or late?
- vegashacker 13y agoMUNI buses, except perhaps first thing in the morning, are essentially never on time. You can't go by any published schedule (which I assume is why Google Maps predictions are essentially random numbers)--you have to go by the NextBus real-time data.
- eridius 13y agoI don't think the concept of "on time" even exists for MUNI. The route may have a defined start and stop time, but that's it. Throughout the day you can get estimates of the average time between two busses on the same route, and I have to assume that data is used to manufacture published schedules, but the schedules don't actually represent anything real.
- haugstrup 13y agoIt's easy to make a live map of Muni busses because they are hardly ever moving.
- gojomo 13y agoYou don't even need an animated GIF! A single JPG is enough!
- Florin_Andrei 13y agoAwesome! Now, nitpicking: When the badges move, the speed is not realistic. Of course, that's only natural, because it's just an update to its new position, it's not actual motion. But it's still jarring to see buses zooming across 3 blocks in 5 seconds. :) Would it be possible to visualize the position update in a different way, to better suggest it's just a position update, not actual motion? I'm thinking, leave the badge in its old place temporarily, make a new badge that moves quickly to the new place, and leave a faint low-contrast or transparent "trail" connecting the two. Once the new badge is in the updated position, remove the old badge and the trail. Basically, the whole transition should be much quicker, and clearly indicate it's an update, not actual motion.
- luiperd 13y ago"But it's still jarring to see buses zooming across 3 blocks in 5 seconds." Not far from reality with some of the bus drivers in this city.
- t413 13y agoReplicate the functionality of transloc (try ncsu.transloc.com) and it'll be golden. Filtering routes and visible route paths!
- dsl 13y agoThis is called dead reckoning[1]. Given the previous two locations you can tell the speed. Since you know the route the bus will take, you just plot it where it would be if it never stopped moving since the last update. It's pretty close 90% of the time. 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_reckoning http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_reckoning
- w-ll 13y agoI'm not sure if the're using dead reckoning. I just saw one turn. To me this looks more like gps. Also, Go Wolf Pack!
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- mikeyouse 13y agohttp://i.imgur.com/ENRtQBs.png http://i.imgur.com/ENRtQBs.png 7 N-Judahs within 10 blocks of each other? Checks out.
- vikrum 13y agoI once saw 8 MUNI trains within 3 blocks on King St near the ballpark. However, this is probably just stale data from the NextBus API :)
- khuey 13y agoIt looks like each car of a two-car train shows up separately? But yeah, totally believable ;-)
- dsl 13y agoYup. Two car trains for some reason are a hack into pretty much every part of MUNI's systems. Thats why in the underground stations you used to hear "N N in 3 minutes." The audible announcements have since been updated, but the old arrival displays that show the screenshot of the control center computer (the squares on the teal lines) still show two car trains the same as two different trains very close together.
- rockdiesel 13y agoIs it possible to add Golden Gate Transit buses to the map?
- raldi 13y agoCool! Is there any way to filter it down to a single transit line?
- vikrum 13y agoNo not yet—the actual route/path information is currently decoupled from the views and animations. Probably shouldn't be too difficult pull the information for published routes as well as do some processing on historic movement. Pull requests gladly accepted :)
- drinkzima 13y agoLove this, to chime in with suggestions, something with color indicating inbound/outbound would be awesome for seeing through some of the noise. Love the line selection idea as well.
- vikrum 13y agoJust pushed an update to show inbound and outbound. Thanks for the suggestion! :)
- jessriedel 13y agoThis is possible because of the NextBus API, where apparently NextBus is a private contractor used by many cities solely to provide this info. If you click on "Select your transit system" on the NextBus website and scroll down for NYC, you'll see that the MTA's Brooklyn, Staten Island, and Brox services are covered (as well as the private "Downtown Connection" bus service in lower Manhattn) but that the normal MTA Manhattan service isn't covered. Does anyone know why? Maybe it's just in the process of being rolled out? http://www.nextbus.com/predictor/agencySelector.jsp http://www.nextbus.com/predictor/agencySelector.jsp
- simcop2387 13y agoNo idea, it's a similar issue with the busses in LA, all of those that cooperate with the LA metro system are on nextbus, but the few that don't (santa monica) aren't on nextbus at all. I suspect it has something to do with cost of the hardware that the busses have.
- ajross 13y agoNextBus was an east bay startup in the first dot com boom, actually, and my second job out of college. Muni was one of the launch installations. We were watching stuff like this (albeit with a decidedly clunkier hand-cooked map instead of Google integration) way back in 2000. I left in 2003, and they were acquired (without profit -- only investor shares were converted) a few years later. Still, we didn't fail spectacularly, which says something. And going on 15 years later it's fun to see a bunch of my old code still running and doing useful things for society.
- thrownaway2424 13y agoMTA has "bus time" which is not like nextbus in three important ways: 1: it is not a scam run by money grubbing jackasses to keep public data for private profit. 2: it is built entirely from open source software, and all the data is accessible with an open api. 3: the predictions are not a pack of lies. http://bustime.mta.info/wiki/Developers/Index http://bustime.mta.info/wiki/Developers/Index
- jessriedel 13y ago
- pla3rhat3r 13y agoThis would be awesome to pair this up with Twilio SMS so you know when your bus is just a few blocks aways from your location.
- sachinag 13y agoWhy isn't the iOS app compatible with the iPhone 4? Is it really that processor-intensive?
- dsl 13y agoI just downloaded the iOS app, and you aren't really missing much. It looks like a proof-of-concept for using Firebase SDK, not a real intended for users app. Crashed twice within the first few minutes, just a bunch of pins floating around SF with no indication of route, etc.
- jstrate 13y agoI guess this gives nice visualization to the deplorable state of Muni. Right now I see nine L trains clustered basically on top of each other in the Sunset. Maybe one between market and West Portal and one on market near Embarcadero. I take the J and as usual I see independent cars running outbound right next to each other with unusually large and sporadic gaps between them. Hard to believe $820 million for such a shitty service.
- drstewart 13y agoThis is actually an inherent side-effect of any transit system: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_bunching http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_bunching
- mindblink 13y agoWhen I traveled in Oslo, the excellent bus system had stops with realtime arrival information. Wonder if this can't be bootstrap into a similar system. (And an aside: Why oh why can't we have the same thing in SF?) Some examples below: http://www.flickr.com/photos/54493673@N00/388240155/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/54493673@N00/388240155/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/21779731@N07/4876550088/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/21779731@N07/4876550088/
- rdouble 13y agoMuni does have that...
- dannyobrien 13y agoAlso great is QuickMuni, an open source Android app with a really nice UI (including live maps) -- https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.worldofbilly.quickmuni&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.worldofbil... (No connection to the developer, though he spoke at Noisebridge's Five Minutes of Fame recently)