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Comment by relate | Hacker News Reader

I'm one of the creators. This was built in 40 hours at Hackzurich 2015 (www.hackzurich.com) and combines the following:

    * The largest rent database of Switzerland 
    * A model of the train system of Switzerland
    * A simple recommender system
    * Google maps for name -> geolocation
    * OpenStreetMap for the map

There are some heavy calculations behind each query, so it takes about 15 sec to load. Furthermore, you need to like at least 3 apartments and dislike at least 3, before the system starts recommending.

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May I suggest a small textual amendment? "tell us where you commute to" might be a little clearer.

Edit: Also "Please enter your commute address..." in the input box. :)

Have you considered using overlays from route360 (https://developers.route360.net)? They are doing some really interesting stuff with multiple transit types (bicycle, car, mass transit, walking) as well as accounting for elevation changes and incorporating GTFS data where applicable.

Very cool, what technologies you are using in your backend?

For commute times are you using the SBB data during rush hour times? My commute is way longer if I don't go to work during rush hour as there are no 'Schnellzüge' outside of those times.

Thanks :-) The stack is based on:

* A Javascript based SPA with handlebars for template and leaflet.js for map

* Django + Postgres for the API

* Simple Vertex-Edge model of the train system, with shortest-path to estimate travel times (including walking distance)

-This is on our to-do list to improve, but we do this since querying all pairwise travel times from SBB/google would be too heavy.

* Numpy/Scipy for the machine learning

Awesome job! Would it be do-able to visualize the _frequency_ of public transport connections too?

For example it may take me only 20 minutes from Uster to the center of Zürich but if there is only 1 train an hour would be nice to know that.

I'm also curious about the commute time estimation. I've been playing with the app around the Geneva area where I live and work and I think the commute times are a bit too optimistic.

Nice idea, in any case!

Yeah, we are not accounting for connection times right now. However, we have the data to make it more accurate, just needs a bit more coding ;)

We take the times from cff / sbb site. We then add a walking time from and to bus / train stations. You can have a look to the graph here if you are interested : http://wonsch.ch/lab/2/

awesome stuff! another entry i really liked took a completely different approach https://kingdom.scapp.io/

also, the company that provides the data currently is currently looking for a Chief Product Officer

http://tamedia.prospective.ch/index_digital.cfm?sprCd=de#

noted ;)

> A model of the train system of Switzerland

I am curious, what do you use for this?

1:18 scale

Awesome, I didn't know about hackzurich. Perhaps I can come along next time?

Anyway, I put in my address in Zug and it stopped responding. Probably overloaded?

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