NYC Subway REST API | Hacker News Reader

NYC Subway REST API

nycitypulse.com

57 pointsmpcadosch14 comments

It is possible to get this data directly from the MTA: http://datamine.mta.info/

It is a good bit messier than this, but it is free, unlike this site. And after all, you never know how long sites like these will be around.

It appears the point of this service is to make it less messy. For that convenience, there's a charge. And now we've both stated the obvious.

I didn't think that the URL for the MTA's own data source was particularly obvious, so I stated it. Apologies if doing so somehow offended you.

HN contributors have a great habit of creating something (some sort of MVP) and charging for it. HN commenters have a habit of immediately pointing out the free way of doing something that takes more time, skills, or effort. It's not offensive, but it gets old and it's not very supportive of the contributors.

Thanks @robbiemitchell for appreciating my work. I put many hours and a lot of effort to make this project happen, and as a student, need a way to support myself so I can continue to grow it. So @untog, it is a little offensive when you just ask contributors to give out their work for free.

Another project that does this - https://github.com/jonthornton/MtaSanitizer. Free and self-hosted.

Putting your API on the same hostname and presumably the same codebase as your website is not a great long-term strategy. And mentioned before, consider HTTPS to protect the API key.

Thank you johndunhart for the advice, I will definitely take into account this in the next iteration of the product.

Does google maps/citymapper consume this sort of real-time train location data?

If not, perhaps you could use the NYC subway REST API to cross reference route calculations

The real-time feed and static schedule are both available from the MTA directly: http://datamine.mta.info/

Both are in GTFS format, and AFAIK Google does consume it.

This API uses the same source of real-time data as Google Maps and CityMapper

Looks like the Cities->Want to see your city here? menu link is broken

Sorry about that. What city would you like to see ?

it uses http so anybody can snoop api key ?

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