Real-Time Tokyo Subway Map | Hacker News Reader

Real-Time Tokyo Subway Map

minitokyo3d.com

628 pointsbane93 comments

That's cool, especially like that the parallel lanes don't overlap. I did something similar, but simpler, a few years ago for Hamburg's public transit "hvv" [1]. Described my approach in a blog post [2]. Hasn't been updated in three year, so probably some lines are broken.

[1]: https://hvv.live

[2]: https://franz.hamburg/writing/the-moving-city.html

Ubilabs did a 3D version here https://demos.ubilabs.com/moving-hamburg/

Tweet: https://twitter.com/ubilabs/status/1448271663041220613

Article: https://ubilabs.com/en/insights/potential-of-digital-twins-f...

Pretty cool! But this is not live right?

hmm yeah, not live. Still looks cool tho'

Nice! We also did something similar:

Demo: https://europe.motis-project.de/

Project site: https://motis-project.de

Source: https://github.com/motis-project/motis

I also made something similar for Boston: https://mbta.benburwell.com

Mine doesn't show the routes. Originally it did, but it was too visually busy. I like the way you did it where the route shows up when you select a vehicle!

Really cool but I'm not sure what's to be gained by it being 3d? If I were to use this as a daily utility it'd happen on my phone while out and about, so I imagine all the rendering could be a critical loss of performance for such a use case. Also seems like an overly complicated way to organize such a dense amount of information? At least a toggle between 2d/3d would be good

The 3d effect for me makes it look like a little toy train set. For me it is much more engaging because it resembles something I can imagine being really tangible

First time I've been to Tokyo several years back and the train networks is what amused me most about Tokyo and Japan in general. I've tried most of the trains in Japan using the heavily discounted tourist Japan Rail Pass (not available for local) including the the Sunrise train for overnight or sleeper train [1]. The private cabin of sleeper train is not covered by the Japan Rail Pass only the open cabin Nobi-Nobi seats but it's really worth it because the hotels in Japan are very expensive. The pass also excludes the fastest Shinkansen Nozomi trains.

For travelling with train (or any public transports in Japan) you can just use Google Maps and it's really Google Maps in steroid in Japan. You will know accurately in real-time all the trains and buses, and their respective arrival/departure times and even their rare occasional delays. All these real-time information are feasible because Japan contracted Hitachi company to provide the info trough the open API for other developers to access and it's very accurate. With Google Maps capabilities the integration with the real-time is just mind blowing to be experienced by any tourist, especially the Japan trains networks extreme timeliness.

I really wish someone come up with a VR or meta based game for tourist in Japan for buying souvenirs. This type of game was my favourite towards the end of 80s for shopping in London using the London Tube trains back in the Windows 2 time. It's only text based game and not real-time but it was an awesome gaming experiences nonetheless. Somehow I've forgotten the name of the game, but I think with all the 3D and real-time information available it will be a blast for the modern incarnation of the tourist souvenirs game to be based in Tokyo, or London.

It looks like the map of the game Tokyo Metro from a player's perspective. It's a big game that surprisingly fits in small box with a large map and so many pieces.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/235344/tokyo-metro

But yes, 2D would probably be easier to navigate. 3D is more fun. Maybe that's the point, and the challenge of building it.

A switch with user preference cookie might be a good idea.

one thing I find to be a nice touch is how the virtual 3D camera view tries to mimic the real-world camera view angle and position

Interfaces used in train operation facilities[1] quite different from this but are similar across systems, and this one is more or less just a visualization.

At personal levels, you either type in (time, origin, goal) into a map or a route finder app and get on trains in sequence as the app says, or do a rudimentary graph search in your head[2] and hope you don't hit 10 minute gaps between trains, which happens, but it's 10 minutes tops anyway.

1: https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/corp-trains-il...

2: This shows hub and spoke model works for trains, but why not for air travel?

For air travel, the stops (airports) are the congested nodes but the way between them (air) has much more possibility.

Trains are limited onto tracks and cannot merge out of the way, so point to point more quickly exhausts route capacity. Stations are less of a constraint.

Trains also lower the cost of transferring; airplane transferring is at best a hassle and at worst an ordeal. Meanwhile, trains can literally stop across the same platform across from each other so you walk a few meters at most. Japan does this a lot, where trains are timed to facilitate such quick connections.

It does show airplanes as well.

Looks like there's a 2d version[0] but the map doesn't load (expired API key?) and it doesn't show as many lines. Can maybe be revived or adapted for your city by checking out the source [1].

[0] https://nagix.github.io/mini-tokyo/ [1] https://github.com/nagix/mini-tokyo

Looking at the speed at which the trains are moving on that map, I don't think it's real-time though.

Probably an early prototype.

That's so much better.

agreed, not very usable on phone, just tried, seems you can't change angle

Two finger swipe up changed the angle for me.

thanks

The amount of detail in this map is absolutely incredible. Pretty much every conceivable rail service is present. I especially like the route planning feature. It’s no Hyperdia [1], that thing is a monster, but it’s super duper cool for local trips. As someone who’s messed around with Tokyo transit apps as half-baked personal projects, color me impressed!

[1] https://www.hyperdia.com/

I tried to search for some routes on Hyperdia. I'd say I still prefer transit.yahoo.co.jp in both results and UI.

Following the author on Twitter [1] has been a treat for me. Even right now, he's building a 3D visualisation of runners for Hakone Ekiden [2]

[1] https://twitter.com/nagix

[2] https://nagix.github.io/hakone-ekiden/

At that point I feel like they should recreate the track using photogrammetry instead of using wonky satellite images. [0] https://www.gtplanet.net/assetto-corsa-modder-photogrammetry...

Holy shit he's the author of NS-SHAFT? I played that game countless hours in my childhood.

Possibly of interest to some - NYC actually has an official live map in beta. https://map.mta.info/

I don't like some of the UI decisions with where it's currently at, primarily not showing the trains and their directions very prominently (the trains are there if you zoom in, but they're just unlabeled rectangles moving on the lines), but it's a start.

It does do a pretty decent job at showing what services are actually operating right now and what stops they're serving, though.

Gah, every map move pushes onto the history stack, terrible.

It seems even unrelated to map move. Just loading up the page injected 10 items onto the stack.

Literally unusable on Safari on an i9. One frame every few seconds, I wonder what they're doing so wrong since OP’s more detailed Tokyo demo is pretty fast.

It’s very cool!

I used to use the Tokyo train system all the time. It’s a true marvel.

I noticed that the Musashino line was running 15 minutes late, this morning.

On Long Island, that would be annoying, but in Tokyo, that’s a train engineer, looking at a firing.

The one thing that always has annoyed me about the Tokyo rail system, is that the various lines are all run by different companies, and it can be hard to find “integrated” maps and schedules. I think that’s improving.

It looks like this map is integrated. Having information about what company runs each line, in the callouts, would be useful.

Can you remove the perspective and just have a top view?

That's pretty much a requirement for me.

Ah you need to go to minitokyo2d.com for that

I agree. Good old 2D would be perfect.

shift + down arrow

Or two finger scroll on a touchscreen.

Reminds me of this real time map of trains in France (including subways, in Paris at least) : https://carto.graou.info/48.6/3/7/0/0

Oh nice ! Thank you :)

For subways, it looks like it’s limited to Paris but trains seems to be shown all across the country.

Cool, but breaks the back button because it pushes to the history stack on each scroll

Previously:

Oct 2019, 50 comments, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21188767

I can't quite tell whether it even shows where lines go under/over one another and knows that exactly, but regardless, it's a wonderful visualization! I wonder at what level the train positions are known exactly versus approximated?

Is there a simple flat / non-3D version of it?

Check out the “ Major railway and Subway Route Map: Metropolitan Area” here:

https://www.jreast.co.jp/e/downloads/index.html

Having the subways be the appropriate depth under the surface would be amazing, it's probably surprising how deep some subway stations go under ground...

While not 3D (and only real-time where real-time data is available, for example Switzerland and the Netherlands is RT), a similar project has been around for some years: https://travic.app/

Includes mainline Trains, Trams, Subways, Busses for many systems around the world.

Also time-traveling & fast forward, all based on GTFS data provided by the transit systems (one of the most useful standards to come from google).

Anyone knows if there's something like this for London? In the thread I've found some links for Switzerland and Paris so it's worth the shot.

Just found this one (didn't know it exists!): https://traintimes.org.uk/map/tube/

Thank you, that looks great!

Hah, nice "Skyfall" mode (presumably inspired by one "tactical" screen in that James Bond movie)

I would like one for london too! Is the live location data publicly available?

Envious no trains seems more than 1 minute late. For some reason covid understaffing issues has messed with live reporting of fleet location for my transit agency. Which I thought wouldn't be affected since I assume it would be automated. With general unreliability, makes planning transit trips huge PIA during winter.

Another good example why more governmental data should be open…

Very cool, but FYI, this is not a "subway" map. It is a transportation map. Trains, Planes, Monorails. The page's title is "Mini Tokyo 3D" not "Real-Time Tokyo Subway Map"

Does it only include JR lines, it looks to be missing other lines? Edit: I was wrong, I see private lines.

I attempted to do something like this for Lisbon's metro but unfortunately never managed to get it working well enough (due to my own skill shortcomings).

The data available is the waiting time for each train ID per station, with infrequent updates and very non linear behaviour. If anyone has tips to turn this into a linear movement along a line I'd be very interested.

mapbox-gl is an engineering marvel. unforunately no longer OSS, but there's a fork [0]. not sure how actively the fork will be further developed aside from bugfixes.

[0] https://github.com/maplibre/maplibre-gl-js

Where are 3D buildings sourced from? Is it just building footprints from OSM extruded to the height tag value?

Is there an open service (OSM-like) where to upload 3D geometry for buildings? I know wikidata has some, but I wonder if it would be possible to build more recognizable maps with that.

is using Mapbox for this feature.

> https://docs.mapbox.com/mapbox-gl-js/example/3d-buildings/

Simple and beautiful on many levels. Also, train and cameras are closely synced with a max lag of 3-5 seconds, with the video trailing a bit. If you zoom out it shows the entire earth map along with rain visualization; it could mean it has been built on top of a weather map. Very nice!

I really like the live web cam feeds. They give some action movie hacker vibes!

I noticed a dark-blue train shrinking in length and then growing again, and finally splitting, which is when I realized that it was actually two trains passing each other.

Mapbox is looking really nice these days.

Mass transit becomes much more useful if all that waiting could be reduced.

Especially when a transfer or two is needed.

One of my favorite counter-intuitive things about mass transit is that well-designed transfers tend to reduce overall travel time for everyone, even without timed transfers:

https://humantransit.org/2009/04/why-transferring-is-good-fo...

People still hate them though, because of the mental effort involved in needing to manage multiple trips with handoff friction.

If you watch stations with transfers, like Naka-meguro, you’ll see that departures are synchronised, especially for express trains. That transfer looks like this [0] with the Hibiya (grey) line on the left, and Toyoko line on the right. You just need to cross the platform, so the transfer doesn’t take any longer than a regular train stop.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Naka-Meguro_Station_Pla...

My first day commuting on the Tokyo subway the train stopped two stations short of my destination. Everyone got off the train and it was clearly being taken out of service so I also got off. I didn't know why the train was out of service so I went to the map to see what my options were. By the time I figured out that my line ended and I needed to transfer to the train across the platform it was pulling away. I was the only one left on a platform that seconds earlier had what seemed like a thousand people. A few minutes later I caught the next train but it was a briefly terrifying experience.

...and now I want to go back to Japan.

The key is to have a regular interval timetable, with "pulses" to allow easy transfers:

http://sydneyferry.blogspot.com/2017/09/six-benefits-of-regu...

The Swiss are masters of this. I recently had a complicated 4-leg journey from Zurich airport, from a mainline InterCity train to a rack railway up a mountain, and every single transfer was timed at exactly 5 minutes.

In Seattle it helps to tell your bus driver you need to make a connection so they can honk at the bus in front of you to tell them not to pull away.

I have never been to Swiss, is every transfer the same difficulty? Having all transfer being exactly the same doesn't make sense to me.

In Japan there is a predefined minimum transfer time between each lines, so the timetable use that to coordinate departure (and if incoming train is late, then the designated connecting train will wait that predefined time for connecting passenger)

Switzerland does something called the takt, which I suppose in English would best translate in cycle.

Swiss timetables are calculated so that trains make stops on a very consistent hourly, half hourly, or quarter hour cycle. Coordination points are at major hubs; every train shows up within the same five minute period, so one can walk down the stairs and head to a different platform to catch any possible number of trains that have stopped at the coordinated time.

The waiting tends to only be about 5 minutes in my experience (10 on the really uncommonly used lines, and only if you just managed to miss one). I've been in worse traffic jams.

That and the scheduling is so unbelievably strict that if I leave at the same time every day, I can make the transfers in my sleep.

Frequency is freedom

- transit advocates

yep, the Seattle light rail has a much less convenient route for me than the busses, but the the train is so much more frequent (and usually isn't 20 minutes late) that I always go for the train

I live in West Seattle so the light rail rarely works for me, even to the airport. Recently I met some friends in the U District and the train was actually a viable option. I was floored by how convenient it was. I can't wait for the network to expand further. Would be nice if the SoDo station had any kind of weather shelter...

There used to be an express route straight from the junction to SeaTac, but it looks like you have to take line c, transfer, and it takes an hour now. It is too bad, since west Seattle is really close to the airport by car.

I live in Ballard, and we are both waiting until the late 2030s for light rail (at least according to the current schedule).

I used to live in the Alaska Junction so that was easier to get around the city. Now I live in Alki so I have to take the 50 to the Junction. I can take the 50 direct to the SoDo rail station so I don't bother with a transfer to the C if I want to catch a train. The train is fine on the way to the airport but I never trust the bus to be there on the way home. The SoDO station has no weather protection so I end up hiring a car every time.

In the summer when the weather is nice I can ride my motorcycle to SeaTac and get free parking, assuming I am only traveling with a backpack.

I think the West Seattle light rail is scheduled to open in 2032 so "only" a decade away. I guess the East Link opens next (this?!) year which will make Bellevue closer but I'm not sure that will do anything for me.

The bus that goes from west Seattle to SeaTac also goes to downtown Bellevue (via Renton), it still might actually be faster than the east link. It’s one of those weird routes I’ve had to rely on since my aunt has lived near the junction since the late 80s (though the 560 started in the 00s) and I stayed at hotels in Bellevue when working for Microsoft.

Weird, I’ll keep that in mind. I almost never need to go to Bellevue anymore and when I do I just drive.

When I worked over there my office was in Mercer Slough so it was easy to drive. Maybe next week I will take the bus over there and have lunch at one of the old favorites.

Ya, there isn’t really a lot of demand for a bus between west Seattle and Bellevue, which makes the route so strange, probably just one of coincidence (both Bellevue and west Seattle need airport routes, and combining them makes for a nice half circle).

Weird, how come the train on the video stream left about a minute after it moved on the map?

Mapbox has done so much work in the recent past. Much respect to the team.

Pretty old. Guy's been tweeting about it constantly for years. (2019) maybe?

Some previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21188767

I’m just getting on the asakusa line now!

Childhood me would love this so much. Thank you!

Could you share the datasource for this?

Take a look at the GitHub ReadMe:

https://github.com/nagix/mini-tokyo-3d#about-data

Awesome, thanks

The live webcam at Kaihinmakuhari is tearing up the decks with rightous electrojungle at the moment.

it even has planes arriving! at Haneda airport. this is awesome

wonderfull

I miss Japan.

Nice

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