I continue to be intrigued by the direction finder for roads. Following on from the idea of an OGF Interrail card, would it be possible to query directions for rail travel?
OpenGeofiction
I continue to be intrigued by the direction finder for roads. Following on from the idea of an OGF Interrail card, would it be possible to query directions for rail travel?
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Discussion
Comment from martinum4 on 10 July 2017 at 19:05
I’m working on something, but that’s far from finished. My current OGF-Projects: - Actual Mapping (haven’t mapped in quite some time now) - OGFRM (OpenGeoFictionRailwayMap) - Bike and Foot Routing (Since people really seem to like the routing server i set up for cars)
Kind regards
Martin
Comment from Sarepava on 11 July 2017 at 18:32
It’s less urgent, for a couple of reasons:
First there tend to be far fewer miles of railway than roads in an area, so it is far clearer what places and routes the railway serves.
Second, unlike roads travel by rail involves somebody else operating your transport at certain times and certain directions. You don’t have to work out much geography other than where to change if needed. Therefore timetables are more useful and would be needed to program such a tool. If I want to take a train from Säntjana to Känton, I only need to know when it leaves and when it arrives, not where it will go in between.
Thirdly, a route planner tool might simply decide that any route using any tracks is possible, whereas in reality no direct service exists.
Comment from trabantemnaksiezyc on 11 July 2017 at 19:36
^ Exactly that. I think that if there was a way to gather OGF train timetables then it would be the best thing ever (yes, I am clearly a railfan and out of my mind. There are just too many users and OGF changes too quickly to coordinate something like this + not everyone cares about railways and someone would need to put some effort to make it).
Comment from thilo on 11 July 2017 at 20:48
This is what you actually want for railways:
http://www.apps-bahn.de/bin/livemap/query-livemap.exe/en?ld=150109&country=DEU&L=vs_livefahrplan&seqnr=1&ident=g7.07119109.1499805535&rt=1&livemap=yes&&country=DEU
Or, for public transport generally:
http://tracker.geops.de/?z=14&s=1&x=966569.1088&y=6465925.4384&l=transport
Comment from Leowezy on 11 July 2017 at 21:14
@thilo, that’s amazing! Definite must-have bookmarks for public transport enthusiasts ;)
Comment from martinum4 on 12 July 2017 at 23:28
I really kinda doubt that anyone would like to deal with GTFS -> https://developers.google.com/transit/gtfs/examples/gtfs-feed It seems a bit overkill for OGF-Purposes, but that’s what used in the real world, one could try to adapt it, if one’s really determined.
Kind Regards
Martin
Comment from Sarepava on 13 July 2017 at 16:07
It would be an interesting summer project for some of us to attempt timetabling for some of our railways and buses. Norscand, Isleno’s older geofiction site, had a route planner and station timetable for the high-speed railways: http://www.norscand.net/transport/ice_time.shtml which is impressive but requires only simple coding skills - an Excel spreadsheet can produce something similar. The difficulty comes in working out the schedules, because it’s not as simple as just measuring the line and dividing it by the train max speed, we have to factor in acceleration, speed limits, dwell times etc. If anyone wants to do this, I suggest looking at the timetables of railways in the real world and trying to devise a formula for realistic distance x time for any class of train.