README.md

Buskatoon

It's a map of Saskatoon that shows where all the buses are at.

Here it is: https://buskatoon.ca/

(Maybe inspired by: http://totransit.ca/)

Run locally

Requires: PHP7 + composer

First, install PHP dependencies and create the trips/routes database:

$ composer install
$ php import_data.php

php buskatoon.php will pull the latest VehiclePositions.pb data and update vehicle_positions.json with it. Use run.sh to have it automatically run every 10 seconds:

$ ./run.sh

Finally, open index.html in your browser. The bus positions on the map should automatically update as the script pulls in new location data.

$ open index.html

The data

Each bus reports its GPS location every 20-30 seconds. The Saskatoon Transit Real Time Data Feed makes these location reports available to us at apps2.saskatoon.ca/app/data/Vehicle/VehiclePositions.pb. This feed also seems to only update every 20-30 seconds itself, so the bus locations we get are always 20-30 seconds out of date.

In addition to latitude and longitude, we also get the bearing (direction the bus is facing, which seems to always be a multiple of 45) and the trip id. The trip id can be looked up in the Saskatoon Open Data Catalogue to get the bus's headsign (like "Centre Mall via Lorne") and route id. The route id can then be looked up to get the route number (like "8") and route name (like "8th Street / City Centre").