Is the Source Code Available?
You bet it is! It can be found on GitHub at:
Can I get a dump of all of the train data from this website?
Yes! I have a few years of train data,
all of which is available on Dropbox.
While I can continue to try to deal with weird edge cases, what we ultimately need is
better/more explicit data coming from SEPTA's API so that better graphs can be made. :-)
I periodically refresh what's in the Dropbox folder, but if you need more recent data than
what is on Dropbox, please
open an issue on GitHub
or
drop me an email and I can export and upload whatever you need.
Why does the 7 Day System Lateness Graph Start At The Current Hour?
Good question! I had originally tried to "solve" the problem by doing custom
sorting by hour in Javascript, but a new problem emerged: how the graph looked
for the rest of the day. If the time was say, 6 PM, the current day's lateness
would say the same for the next 5 hours. I thought of reducing the lateness
to zero for the rest of that, but that's also not an optimal solution as it
make it looks like the trains will be at zero lateness for the rest of the evening.
I'm open for other suggestions on how to make the grpah look better.
Why do some of the train graphs show the wrong station order, or even fail to show a train?
This is due partly due to some train lines overlapping.
For example, train 553 is:
- Glenside Inbound
- Lansdale/Doylestown Inbound
- and Paoli/Thorndale Outbound
Only by looking at an actual map can you tell that the Glenside Inbound is a subset
of the Lansdale/Doyletown Inbound. This situation (and many others) aren't clearly disclosed in the train data.
Now I know what you're thinking, let's just ignore stations like Glenside that are in the "middle"
of other lines. Problem is, sometimes Glenside
is the endpoint. Train 3425
is a good example of this: it starts as a West Trenton Inbound and ends at the airport. But
some days it starts as a Glenside inbound.
At least, that's what I got from
parsing train numbers out of the schedules listed at
http://www4.septa.org/schedules/rail/index.html. Is it possible that the schedules contain
outdated info? Yes, absolutely.
Have you built anything else?
Yep! I've built a few things you may find interesting: