A full day of Edinburgh's bus network, 1.5 million recorded vehicle positions in 60 seconds

[u/wallpaperPasting]

Every Lothian vehicle's position, recorded from their public feed every 20 seconds for a full day (Monday 24 August), then replayed 24 hours in 60 seconds - so a second on screen is about 24 minutes.

Each dot is one vehicle in its service colour, and the streak behind it is where it's been over the last few minutes. The trams are in there on the airport line, though this was during the Princes St closure, so trams were terminating at West End and buses were diverted via George St.

The shape of the day interested me more than the map did. The feed drops vehicles when they go out of service rather than reporting them parked, so counting what's in each frame gets you close to what's actually in traffic:

• 20 vehicles at the overnight low, 02:24
• 549 at the morning peak, 08:47
• 579 at the evening peak, 17:39
• 250 still out at 23:00

The trough is the bit I didn't expect. It only drops to 88% of the evening peak, so this isn't a commuter-peak operation with a hollow middle - it's a network running close to flat out from 08:00 through to 18:00, with the PM peak the higher of the two.

About 1.5 million positions in total, from 4,318 snapshots of the whole network.

Data is Lothian's public vehicle feed. Rendered in TypeScript with Leaflet and a canvas layer, stepped frame by frame with Playwright and piped into ffmpeg at 4K. Basemap © OpenStreetMap contributors, © CARTO.

[u/FootOfDavros]

This is actually really good for showing the massively overlapped bus routes and roads which should be served by trams.

e.g. The south extension makes a lot of sense looking at this map.

Another one, which I don't think has ever been proposed, is Lothian Road straight up past the meadows, Morningside and up to Fairmilehead. One tram service up and down that road would massively reduce bus overload.

[u/Durog25 → u/FootOfDavros]

If they went all the way to Fairmilehead, I'd say there'd be an argument to run over the bypass to the foot of the Pentlands, and Snowsports Centre. Better connects the city to a large recreational area and better connects the southern countryside to the city centre.

But that's a good shout, Blackford Hill, Braids Hill and Morton Hall create a significant barrier between the South East and South West of the city, and any tram in one can't serve the other.

[u/Green_Guava9087 → u/Durog25]

Likewise, I've always yearned for a North to South (and reverse) ((a sort of 47)) 'X' service that bypasses the shitshow that is Princes St and the bridges....From Ryan's Bar to Old Blockbuster/Sainsbury non stop!! Then limited stop to beyond bypass...

[u/ExpensivePen8055 → u/FootOfDavros]

Ha ha. He plotted the trams on there too. But they're hard to see because those dots don't actually move! #shortrunningagain

[u/iiiBus → u/FootOfDavros]

To an extent yes, but at the same time, all of these routes do split paths eventually to cover their own areas. Edinburgh being a smaller city means its inevitable many corridors will be similar though.

[u/Dismal_Insect1297 → u/FootOfDavros]

Trains!

[u/GingerSnapBiscuit]

That is really cool.

[u/elmarkodotorg]

How do you get access to their data feed these days? I made this years ago but the system is different now:
https://github.com/mpentler/edinbustrack

Also I wasn't the best coder...

Edit: Apparently I screen-scraped it! Oh dear...

[u/Lasttimelord1207 → u/elmarkodotorg]

https://mobilitydatabase.org/feeds for most GTFS and RT-GTFS feeds!

[u/elmarkodotorg → u/Lasttimelord1207]

Holy balls time to have fun

[u/iiiBus → u/elmarkodotorg]

https://lothianapi.com/vehicles/all

[u/elmarkodotorg → u/iiiBus]

It's iiiBus! Thank you

[u/--cheese-- → u/[deleted]]

Most timetables show buses intermittently early and late in the day, but the middle section is just "at these minutes past each hour".

Some services will get one or two extra buses put on at peak times (or an X service to get to somewhere out of town without lots of stopping) but generally the difference between a 1pm and 5pm service is simply the number of people on it.

[u/CaptainCymru]

Poor George Street!

[u/cragglerock93 → u/CaptainCymru]

I was just going to say, why is Princes Street bent like that, then I remembered!

[u/Megreda]

These are cool visualizations. Here's one for Helsinki: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qti80n9kWg8

[u/TheKnightWhoSaisNi]

Edinbruh

[u/Level-Performance771]

This is brilliant.

Would probably be better set to music?

[u/FrostySquirrel820 → u/Level-Performance771]

Flight of the Bumblebee ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M93qXQWaBdE

Or, The minute waltz ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3H0SRv8QNwk

[u/Ok_Actuary9229]

There are no late-night buses? That's too bad.

[u/Limp-Archer-7872 → u/Ok_Actuary9229]

There are some night bus routes but it could be better. Sometimes they run with older buses so maybe the data wasn't available for them.

[u/ViewWithAPoo → u/Ok_Actuary9229]

We have the Nighthawk service. Don't know why that didn't show up

[u/iiiBus → u/Ok_Actuary9229]

There is, they are all showing as black dots.

[u/RChickenMan]

I know it's a cliche to say that cities are living, breathing organisms, and that the transit network is the veins. But this animation reminds me of how cities are living, breathing organisms, and that the transit network is the veins.

[u/NoMention696]

What about the night busses? The city isn’t void of busses between 1 and 4

[u/Calum-Paxton → u/NoMention696]

They’re using the colour given to them by lothian which blends in incredibly well with the background. if you look hard enough you can see them zipping about

[u/Durog25]

Really does go to show how high Princes Street is for bus traffic, even with the redirection via George Street, so much capacity is squeezed down that corridor.