Please also read follow ups to this post with the tag “stis”.
More stations available: STIS Update and News from October 31st 2009
I always wanted to create a little (maybe even useful) Twitter tool with their API. I finally managed to create it and I named it “SBB Train Information System” or STIS for short. It is more like a proof of concept and it can be shut down by anybody anytime. I do not have any rights or permissions to use the SBB train data, but I hope they will never see it or if they see it, like it ;-).
What is this for, you might ask. Basically it checks the SBB website for any train delays in one of these stations: Basel, Chur, Jona, Rapperswil and Zurich. Then it will post delays or additional information (cancellation, delay time and so on) to Twitter. From there you can “follow” any of the stations and forward those updates to your mobile phone or Instant Messenger client. Now you always know if any train from a station is delayed.
It is not yet perfect, but I keep improving it and I am also looking for ideas or feedback. Please leave a comment or drop me an email if you have an idea or opinion.
Twitter Feeds:
Hi,
Impressive! I’m looking for such a feed for some time now for my site swisstrains.ch. I have some data now from sbb, but this looks interesting as well. How do you do it? Could you get in contact with me?
Robert
Great idea! (Und denn na vomne Bündner. *g*) I’m looking forward to hear more of such tools.
Do you screen-scrape the data from sbb.ch? Anyway, very cool idea.
@Andreas
Thanks 🙂 You might be surprises how many geeks are in Graubünden
@Daniel
Yes, I screen-scrape a special page on sbb.ch and generate a xml. Should I write about the technical background?
@Corsin
No, not necessary 🙂 You could also make it available as a plain RSS feed (I noticed that there is an Atom feed on twitter, though, so that’s not an absolute must).
Deine Links sind ein bisschen verwirrend. Du schreibst von Stationen, die Links führen aber zu Städteartikeln bei Wikipedia. Ich hätte da eigentlich die entsprechenden Twitter-Feeds erwartet.
@Ralf
Stimmt. Hab es mal angepasst.
Ich schätze sehr, dass der Dienst wieder läuft! Herzliche Bahnfahrergrüsse
Moni
Hallo Moni
Besten Dank für das Feedback. Ich werde wohl in den nächsten Tagen ein wenig an einer verbesserten Version arbeiten.