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Live London Tube map

Transport for London (TfL) has released an API which includes live data on where trains are on the Tube network.

Add that to some clever coders and a few hours to get this …

http://traintimes.org.uk:81/map/tube/

Each yellow flag is the position of a Tube train on the network – click on one to see more details. You can zoom in to see a particular station.

As far as we can tell, each trains position is an approximation based upon the last reported status at a Tube station.  If there’s a hold up between stations, this map won’t show the train’s exact position. Since most Tube stations are relatively close together the yellow flags are a reasonable guess about where the train is and when it’s due at the next station.

Interesting enough but probably not a lot of daily usefulness. It does show how effective publishing of live data can be compared to an organization trying to do everything ‘in house’. TfL makes the data available and then leverages the power of clever people around the net to display their transport information in innovative ways. It would be slow and expensive for a transport operator to try doing this ‘in-house’ but amazingly that’s what many operators still try to do.

There’s also this page  you can see where TfL cameras are located, click on one to see the current view.

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