How the Bay Area’s trains reach Trainiac
Also: san francisco, california, caltrain
Caltrain and BART publish their timetables and their predictions. Trainiac fetches both and keeps every answer.
Example
The railways publish
A timetable, and trip updates through the day
511.org hands them out
One place for every Bay Area operator
Trainiac fetches
Every two and a half minutes, and keeps every answer
Your journey
Your train, frozen into your account when you log it
Around San Francisco Bay, Trainiac knows two railways: Caltrain and BART. Neither sends messages the way Britain’s railway does. Instead they publish files, and anyone with a key can come and fetch them from 511.org.
There are two kinds. The timetable says every train that is planned to run and when it calls at each station. Trip updates say how today’s trains are really doing: when each one is now expected at the stops it has left to make.
Trainiac checks the timetables twice a day and keeps each new version, and fetches the trip updates every two and a half minutes, keeping every answer exactly as it came.
You can search between any two stations of the two railways, and a trip can change from one to the other where they meet, at Millbrae.
In Trainiac
Any station marked “Bay Area” when you add a journey.