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Show HN: I built a transit travel time map

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Re: Show HN: I built a transit travel time map

#31

Post by robjan »

samstave wrote: post #23
guessmyname wrote: post #19

I get sad every time I return back to America from Asia because of how small the public infrastructure is in many parts of America compared to Asia. If anyone has lived or at least visited places like Tokyo, Japan or Shanghai, China, you probably understand what I am referring to.

I have maintained that any US Public Transportation employee with any amount of agency/authority should be required to go to SEA (singapore, HK, Shanghai, Tokyo) and be required to go to meetings which are far from their hotel but they must get there via public transport only... This will make their requests for more money/raises/etc seem absolutely insane when you compare what these countries/cities/agencies do WRT…

HK has an interesting business model in that the MTR is majority owned by the government and the government grants the land on top of train stations to MTR. MTR then generally builds shopping malls, offices and residential developments e.g LOHAS park, there making it a property company which operates (very profitable) rails between its properties. Hence, the average person not only travels on the MTR but also spends money at MTR Malls and may live and/or work in an MTR property. MTR corporation also provides consultancy services and even runs other railways in other countries e.g the Elizabeth Line on the London Underground.

Re: Show HN: I built a transit travel time map

#33

Post by all2 »

cridenour wrote: post #26
baq wrote: post #16

Public service announcement - these kind of maps are known as isochrone maps and they're anything but new, but are (IMHO criminally) unpopular. They're extremely helpful when house hunting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isochrone_map

Agreed. It took weeks of researching to find this term when I was looking to optimize travel time search. Once I did, everything became easier! Ended up forking Open Transit Planner, this was back in 2015. Turned 40 minutes real estate searches into 40ms or so.

What is this Open Transit Planner and where do I find it?

Re: Show HN: I built a transit travel time map

#34

Post by ng-henry »

hoosieree wrote: post #27
ng-henry wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep the only cities that are supported are on the list at the top: Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, New York, and Paris. Adding support for other cities is a pain in the butt to find the corresponding GTFS, upload the vector tiles to postgis, etc.

I just zoomed out from Toronto and tried Waterloo/Kitchener and it worked... [edit] but apparently I was just lucky.

Hahaha you discovered it! Originally I had waterloo because I study there, but I removed the city from the picker as I thought HN wouldn't know what Waterloo was :).

It even supports GO buses between Waterloo GTA (unfortunately the max is 3 hours so you can't get everywhere just yet).

Re: Show HN: I built a transit travel time map

#35

Post by akamaka »

giovannibonetti wrote: post #25
guessmyname wrote: post #19

I get sad every time I return back to America from Asia because of how small the public infrastructure is in many parts of America compared to Asia. If anyone has lived or at least visited places like Tokyo, Japan or Shanghai, China, you probably understand what I am referring to.

Population density makes a huge difference. The more people live in a city, the more funds the government has to invest to get a better transportation system. In general, population density in East Asia is far higher than in the US.

There’s not much correlation between density and quality of public transit.

If you look at a top 10 list of best transit systems, you’ll see medium density cities like Oslo and Helsinki right beside Tokyo and Hong Kong.

Or within the USA, compare Miami to Seattle. The only difference is that one city decided to build mass transit and the other didn’t.

It’s entirely possible to build an appropriate transit system for any type of city.

Re: Show HN: I built a transit travel time map

#36

Post by arafalov »

I want very similar to this but for shopping without a car.

Like, if I want to buy something big from Walmart or Costco (to keep to generic shop names) and it does not matter if I am on a train/metro/subway for 10 minutes or 20 minutes, but it totally does matter number of transport switches of bus->subway) and walking is really bad.

So, it would make sense to go to a very distant shop, but that is right opposite the direct train.

Does anything like this exist (for any city really)? The algorithm must be quite similar, but with different graph steps weighted differently depending on method of movement.

Re: Show HN: I built a transit travel time map

#37

Post by ghaff »

rootusrootus wrote: post #29
tsudounym wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a chicken and egg problem, stop making excuses for Western governments. Nearly all US cities had streetcars and dense walkable downtowns. There are pictures of this. They were destroyed in the 1950s due to pressure from car/oil lobbies, as well as eager house buyers who wanted cheap FHA loans. (Only available to whites) Europe is not immune either, they would've followed the US's footsteps entirely if it were…

> They were destroyed in the 1950s due to pressure from car/oil lobbies Popular explanation but largely false. They were destroyed because people quit using them.

But it's far more satisfying to blame some change you don't like on $EVILCORP than a more complicated narrative that revolves around people as a whole preferred something different so it didn't really make sense for government/a company to keep pouring money into a pit to keep a small minority happy.

The story often goes that someone destroyed a fully operational system for profits when in fact the system was badly deteriorated and not really used a lot.

Re: Show HN: I built a transit travel time map

#38

Post by ghaff »

guessmyname wrote: post #19

I get sad every time I return back to America from Asia because of how small the public infrastructure is in many parts of America compared to Asia. If anyone has lived or at least visited places like Tokyo, Japan or Shanghai, China, you probably understand what I am referring to.

Asia is also home to cities with some of the most congested sprawl with mediocre (at best) public transportation in the world. Tokyo and Shanghai are great. Somewhere like Jakarta less so.

Re: Show HN: I built a transit travel time map

#39

Post by ng-henry »

vipshek wrote: post #30

This is super cool! I particularly like that you render the route along transit lines to reach each destination, which is differentiated from other isochrone maps I've seen. I would love to use this while hunting for apartments in a large city. I do think there are a number of things you could do to improve the UX here. Hope this doesn't come across as too harsh, but here are some suggestions... 1. Double-click to se…

Hey, thanks for the feedback! Greatly appreciated.

1. Yes I think "locking" makes sense. The entire action of viewing the paths to different destinations still needs to be polished up, especially for the mobile version as well. When I tried it before posting to HN it was instant (30ms) but now it seems to be extra laggy because the CPU is maxed. I just upgraded the server from 4 -> 16 cpus, so let's hope that does something haha.

2. 100%

3. Agree as well. I chose the easiest solution when developing (and I also develop on a large monitor so it's harder to notice the occlusion), but adding a hide toggle would certainly have been better.

Re: Show HN: I built a transit travel time map

#40

Post by ghaff »

akamaka wrote: post #35
giovannibonetti wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Population density makes a huge difference. The more people live in a city, the more funds the government has to invest to get a better transportation system. In general, population density in East Asia is far higher than in the US.

There’s not much correlation between density and quality of public transit. If you look at a top 10 list of best transit systems, you’ll see medium density cities like Oslo and Helsinki right beside Tokyo and Hong Kong. Or within the USA, compare Miami to Seattle. The only difference is that one city decided to build mass transit and the other didn’t. It’s entirely possible to build an appropriate transit system for…

Past a certain density point probably. It also helps if there's some degree of concentration where people want to go even if the city as a whole is only medium density.

However, things get too spread out and it breaks down--including that transit runs on a sufficiently spaced-out schedule that people with a choice just don't want to take it.

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