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Comment by DangerousPie | Hacker News Reader

Looks like they are just interpolating the location between two stations using the expected arrival times. If no expected arrival times are available, they simply simulate the location to match the planned arrival times. So this is not really "live".

> VBB-Livekarte zeigt berechnete Positionen der Fahrzeuge zwischen zwei Stationen; falls kein Live-Fahrplan vorhanden, dann Position gemäß geplanten Fahrzeiten

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Good catch. I live in Berlin and use this sometimes, and I hadn't actually noticed that disclaimer before. (For future reference, it's under "Position der Fahrten" on [1].)

Munich's live S-Bahn map[1] takes a slightly different approach:

Um die Position der S-Bahnen auf der Karte anzuzeigen, werden die Positionsmeldungen der Züge an ausgewählten Signalstandorten erfasst und dazwischen hochgerechnet. Es handelt sich somit derzeit um keine GPS-Ortung.

(from "So funktioniert's" on [2])

So they don't actually use GPS positioning either, but they do interpolate from data that comes from their rail signalling system, which I imagine is a bit more precise than using realtime departures and arrivals in hh:mm.

[1] http://www.vbb.de/de/article/fahrplanauskunft/vbb-livekarte/...

[2] http://s-bahn-muenchen.hafas.de/bin/540/help.exe/dn?tpl=live...

[3] http://www.s-bahn-muenchen.de/s_muenchen/view/fahrplan/echtz...

Agreed, it's not really live, but still cool. There's a similar project for Swiss trains here: http://maps.vasile.ch/transit-sbb/

Source is available on Github (not my project).

The same thing exists for Austria as well: http://zugradar.oebb.at/

That shouldn't be a problem if the trains are on time.

even if they're running late it should be fairly accurate; there are no express trains here in Berlin so it's never very long since a train has been in a station for a positional fix.

Thats funny because I feel like I waited less time for trains to arrive in Berlin than I do in NYC (including express trains...)

Trains run every five minutes during normal business hours. It's great. Ten minutes at night, weekends, etc.

That was either the best joke ever, or you haven't used German S-Bahn yet. (The "S" is supposed to be short for the German word for "city" but we jokingly refer to them as "standing still-train" instead of "city-train")

At least when I was in Berlin this September the U-Bahn worked perfectly.

'Stand-Bahn'? Never heard that, although haven't lived in Berlin since before the 'meltdown' in 2008. Traditionally the S-Bahn is Berlin's favorite transit system (you can look out the window!), the most far-reaching, and the most interesting historically.

Although it has so many problems it's still my favourite method to get from A to B. Yes, windows, Internet, well spread out network. That's nice.

Actually I don't think it is 100% known what the "S" stands for. I think "Stadtschnellbahn" is most likely. The "Stadtbahn" only refers to the east-west route.

Good to know, because many towns have that I thought it's really Stadt-Bahn. Didn't know S5/7/75 have that special name.

maybe its like SOS and stands for nothing, at least at the beginning. It was used because it was easy to morse and not used ;)

You should travel more. You would never complain again. Berlin public transport is amazingly consistent compared to anywhere else I have lived (bar Singapore).

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