August updates

Hi all,

It’s been since April that we haven’t done another community update. Back then, we announced our migration to new servers, we’ve announced that we would have 2 students at open Summer of code 2015 and that we would start building a GTFS ourselves, as the law would now permit us to do so. NMBS/SNCB will open up their data by the end of this year… but why wait if their data is already on their website?

Launch of GTFS and GTFS-RT for the SNCB

Check out http://gtfs.irail.be! It now contains data from NMBS/SNCB for 2015, including our first realtime feed for the Belgian railway company (huge news for techies)! This feed contains the updates such as train delays and notifications on the entire network. You can discover what’s in this GTFS-RT by checking out our new dashboard http://analytics.irail.be.

2/3d of the iRail team at open summer of code 2015's final event

2/3d of the iRail team at open summer of code 2015’s final event

The project has been developed during open Summer of code 2015 by Brecht Van de Vyvere and Tim Tijssens. A report on their 3 week journey can be read over here: http://open.summerofcode.be/?s=gtfs.

Nice GTFS bla bla… but what does it mean for me?

If you are not technical, you might be delighted with this news: you can now do intermodal route planning across entire Belgium with apps such as CityMapper and Ally.

Furthermore, also webservice creators such as the guys from Navitia.io implemented our feeds in their webservice! As a developer, you can now use their API to get route planning advice from A to B across Europe.

New apps on top of our API

RailerApp

I know, this one was also announced in the April updates, but hey… they now added support for the Apple Watch!

apple watch with NMBS/SNCB info

Trainfo

A new Android app hit the market. Let us know what you think!

Our servers

Moving away from apache, now installing nginx and varnish for cachability. We used to have varnish installed over apache a while back. Then we’ve decided to put HTTPS on all our domains. Now, we’re going to make our servers faster again by installing varnish. This will be done by the lovely people of skyscrapers (who gladly gave me a spot to work when I was in Antwerp last week 😉 ).

The future

Want to contribute to iRail? We’re in desperate need of some extra hands. We’re organising an event in September to get more people on board. Do stop by!

One more thing…

We might get NMBS/SNCB support in Google Maps earlier than you think…

It’s great to see a community that started 5 years ago more alive than ever!

– Pieter

About Pieter Colpaert

Pieter is a researcher in linked transport data publishing at MMLab - UGent - iMinds. He also co-founded Open Knowledge Belgium, in which he represents the iRail/Open Transport Working Group.

11. August 2015 by Pieter Colpaert
Categories: News & events, open data, Summer of code | 1 comment

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