
Show HN: Visualizing transit delays in real time for SF MUNI - bdon
http://bdon.org/2013/08/28/visualizing-transit-delays/
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drewblaisdell
Very nice.

This uses the same type of visualization as the train schedule in Edward
Tufte's _Envisioning Information_ : [http://www.c82.net/images/java-railroad-
lg.jpg](http://www.c82.net/images/java-railroad-lg.jpg)

~~~
bdon
I haven't seen that one before, neat! The one featured in the first Tufte book
is E.J. Marey's schedule: [http://mbostock.github.io/protovis/ex/marey-train-
schedule.j...](http://mbostock.github.io/protovis/ex/marey-train-schedule.jpg)
(as linked from
[http://mbostock.github.io/protovis/ex/caltrain.html](http://mbostock.github.io/protovis/ex/caltrain.html))

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stereo
Have you tried using different colours to make it easier to distinguish
inbound and outbound, like this?
[http://www.opentrack.ch/opentrack/downloads/otTrainGraph.pdf](http://www.opentrack.ch/opentrack/downloads/otTrainGraph.pdf)

I suppose you could even set the colour dynamically along the track, and set
the hue based on how late the train is.

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toki5
Oh my gosh that logo is unbelievably distracting! Especially when opening a
page that "does ____ in real time" \-- I spent way longer than I should have
thinking "what is this logo doing and what does it have to do with the rest of
the page ..."

Once I got over that, very cool site :)

~~~
Groxx
I couldn't figure out what you were talking about until I tried the site in
Chrome xD

fwiw it's just a solid gray in the latest Firefox nightly. No idea if that's
by design / site bug / FF bug.

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gojomo
Very cool! I live a couple blocks from the N, take it downtown all the time.

Random look/interface ideas to consider if you continue to tweak, no
particular order:

• different colors for inbound/outbound

• different colors or line thicknesses for when the slope is/is-not on 'ideal'
schedule

• suppress interior (scroll-wheel) scroll-event capturing: slow and
unintuitive on its scaling/shifting effect

• always show +/\- 3 stops slopes extending from current vehicle positions
('prediction'/vs-ideal)

• allow selection of stop; decorate arriving vehicles with estimated arrival
times (either as numbers or line-extrapolations)

• suppress refresh countdown - distracting, uncancellable, so doesn't add much

• when selecting (or even hovering) over one path/vehicle/stop, and thus
showing more info for it, dim all others

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Groxx
Neat - I'll have to read on how you did this, I'd love to incorporate it in a
transit site/app somehow :)

There are some oddities, though - what does this mean?
[http://cl.ly/image/2p0b2c1H2l1X](http://cl.ly/image/2p0b2c1H2l1X)

~~~
bdon
The direction (inbound/outbound) comes from NextBus data and is frequently
erroneous, so in that case a train traveling outbound is shown with the
inbound vehicles.

The position above the last stop is because MUNI vehicles have significant
extra track beyond the 4th/King stop that they use to wait and turn around.

~~~
Groxx
Oh, of course - I forgot I didn't click the outbound box. After seeing that
it's pretty clear :)

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annymsMthd
It looks alot like something I did for my last job. Comparing schedules to
actual transit bus performance. It's really neat stuff when you start digging
into distance/time. [http://imgur.com/gmN3EfS](http://imgur.com/gmN3EfS)

