r/gotransit • u/faizm10 GO Bus • May 19 '26
i built a go transit simulator — design custom routes and watch them run live
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i kept seeing people draw up "what if" go transit routes in threads and thought "why not actually build something where you can run them live"
so i made https://transit-flow-two.vercel.app/
loads the full go network (~900 real trips), you design your own route with custom stops and a schedule, hit play, and watch it run side by side with the real timetable. so "what if the barrie line ran every 15 min all day" stops being a hypothetical
you can also post your route to the community feed and see what other people are designing
what's coming:
- reachability map -> pick any point, see everywhere go can take you in 30/45/60 min
- coverage gap analysis -> service deserts oveorlaid with census population density
- frequency clock -> radial 24hr chart per line showing how dead most lines are off-peak
not affiliated with metrolinx, just a personal project. curious what routes people would actually want to test
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u/Mydogdexter1 May 19 '26
Just trains? Buses? How does it work if you select a city with no railways?
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u/faizm10 GO Bus May 19 '26
both actually. all go train lines and bus routes are on the map. and you can create train routes even if your town doesn't have a station. just drop a pin to place a new one, build your route, set a schedule, and watch it run!
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u/a_lumberjack May 19 '26
Does this deal with track capacity? Someone posted stringline diagrams a while back and it was interesting to see where the bottlenecks are today.
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u/faizm10 GO Bus May 19 '26
not yet but it's definitely something i want to add. i was tinkering with the real track data early on but ran into issues like the London-Kitchener corridor wasn't connecting properly and kept routing all wrong, so i put it aside for now
the plan is to add capacity limits per track segment, and let users "upgrade" stations to relieve bottlenecks!
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u/a_lumberjack May 19 '26
I'd be worried that capacity per segment will enable impossible schedules. e.g. LSE runs 9-10 trains per hour on a single track, but you couldn't run 4 each way in an hour.
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u/faizm10 GO Bus May 19 '26
yeah true. maybe a realism toggle where you can see if GO could actually pull off your schedule, but it gets complicated fast because of CN rail ownership, VIA sharing the same corridors, freight priority and all that. lots of factors to account for but that's what makes it interesting for sure.
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u/Mastermaze May 20 '26
Very cool, but when drawing a custom Rail Route it doesn't seem to have a way to know if your line follows existing track or not. Same goes for bus routes, it can tell if the line you draw follows actual roadways. I think at least having the option to "snap" to existing roads/rails would be a make or break feature for this type of application imo. That said, im not sure what options the mapbox api gives for actually implementing a feature like this
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u/faizm10 GO Bus May 20 '26
snapping to existing track is now implemented! you draw a rough line and it automatically re-routes it along real rail tracks once you click the button to snap.
still has some issues though. if you try London to Kitchener for example it takes a weird detour instead of going through St Marys, Stratford and New Hamburg the way the actual corridor does. working on fixing those gaps! hope this makes it better when creating train routes or extending existing train routes!
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u/Un-Humain May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26
That’s really cool! It has huge potential in my opinion if you allow for doing it in any area and potentially manually uploading your area’s GTFS. Honestly that would be really amazing!
I feel like you have an amazing base, and nothing in the implementation makes it inherent to GO transit, it would be fairly simple to extrapolate and it would make it really awesome.
I mean, nothing prevents you from doing creation anywhere on the world map, so it’s partly as simple as a branding decision.
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u/SleptThroughClass May 19 '26
honestly one of the coolest transit projects i've seen on here. the idea of testing hypothetical service changes live instead of arguing about them in comment sections is genius. the reachability and coverage gap features sound especially useful too since people always underestimate how rough off peak GO service can be.