SunTransit: Real-time Public Transit Tracking with Performance Dashboard
SunTransit is a project that helps you see where public transit vehicles are in real time, and how well they are running on schedule. It fetches live bus and train locations from different agencies, checks if they are delayed at each stop, and stores this information for later analysis.
With SunTransit, you can view a dashboard that shows all vehicles moving on a map, similar to how flight tracking websites work for airplanes. This makes it easy to track your bus or train, and also see how reliable a transit agency is over time.
In addition to real-time tracking, SunTransit continuously saves detailed historical data for every trip and stop. If you're an urban planner, researcher, or developer and want to use this dataset for your own analysis or project, feel free to reach out — I’m happy to share access. Just credit me in your work!
Currently, SunTransit tracks:
- Valley Metro (Phoenix, AZ)
- Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (Boston, MA)
What can SunTransit do?
- Show live locations of buses and trains on a map
- Tell you if a vehicle is running late or on time at each stop
- Help agencies and riders understand overall transit performance
- Store historical data for deeper analysis
SunTransit is designed to be reliable and easy to deploy on any cloud platform, but is currently running locally to save on costs.
Screenshots
1. Live Tracking
2. Stops Delay Heatmap
SunTransit Has Two Main Products
1. The Data Product: A complete record of every transit trip — capturing when each vehicle actually arrived at each stop compared to its scheduled time. This data is useful for analyzing delay patterns, transit reliability, and overall agency performance.
2. The Dashboard: A live web interface that visualizes this data alongside real-time bus and train locations. It helps users and agencies monitor transit performance at a glance.
Want to use this dataset for your own project? Just contact me — I'm happy to give you access. All I ask is that you give me a credit in your project or publication.
