Wiener Linien Departure Board

Introduction

A small project that uses the OGD Realtime API from Vienna's public transport provider, Wiener Linien. It automatically fetches current departures from a selected station and displays them in an HTML frontend. Also included are three Python scripts that generate a JSON file containing all IDs for each station using publicly available CSV data. If you want to build your own departure display at home, this is for you!

Description

About the API

Wiener Linien provides a free, open API for fetching realtime departure information and traffic data. To use the API, you need to provide the RBL ID (Rechnergesteuertes Betriebs-Leitsystem, "computer-controlled service management system"). Each RBL ID corresponds to:

1. A specific station or stop
2. A specific line
3. A specific direction

For example, ID 4903 refers to:

1. The station Rochusgasse
2. The line U3
3. The direction Ottakring

ID sources and compilation

Matching RBL IDs with their station names can be tricky. We can download four CSV files from data.gv.at:

• wienerlinien-ogd-fahrwegverläufe.csv
• wienerlinien-ogd-haltepunkte.csv
• wienerlinien-ogd-haltestellen.csv
• wienerlinien-ogd-linien.csv

To build accurate name–ID mappings, these files need to be merged. This project includes three Python scripts:

• extract_raw.py
  First version, deprecated but included for reference
• extract.py
  Second version, outputs cleaned data
• group_stops.py
  Groups entries with the same name but different IDs, because one station usually has several IDs for different lines and directions

These scripts generate stops_grouped.json, which acts as a registry containing all station IDs. The frontend uses this registry to list stations. When a user selects a station, the corresponding IDs are fetched and passed to the API, and the results are displayed.

Quirk with multiple entries

There may still be multiple entries for what appears to be the same station. Bus and tram stops often have different internal names than subway stations. Despite the “U” appearing in the name for some entries, those may refer to tram/bus stops announcing a subway connection rather than the subway platforms themselves. Generally, the first entries are subway stops, and entries containing “S”, “U”, or “<>” tend to be tram/bus entries. This is still a work in progress.

Backend

The backend uses the requests library and FastAPI to serve data to the frontend. Note that Wiener Linien’s fair-use guidelines recommend a minimum polling interval of 15 seconds. The default here is 30 seconds, but large stations (e.g., Karlsplatz) may still cause timeouts. If you encounter missing data or slow responses, try increasing the interval to 60 seconds.

To change this, edit the startAutoRefresh() function in script.js and change the timeout value from 30000 to 60000 milliseconds.

More details about the API can be found in project/api_description.md.

Frontend

The frontend (frontend/) consists of vanilla HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It calls the backend, which in turn queries the OGD API. Station names and IDs are fetched from the backend, and the frontend periodically pings the backend to avoid outdated information.

Setup

All software in this repo should work on any OS. If something doesn’t work, feel free to contact me.

1. Clone the repo and install the dependencies from requirements.txt
2. Download the 4 CSV files from data.gv.at
   • "Distributionen" tab
   • Download:
     • wienerlinien-ogd-fahrwegverläufe.csv
     • wienerlinien-ogd-haltepunkte.csv
     • wienerlinien-ogd-haltestellen.csv
     • wienerlinien-ogd-linien.csv
3. Move the files to backend/data/
4. In a terminal, cd to the /data folder
5. Run py -m extract.py
6. Run py -m group_stops.py
7. You should now have:
   • stops_clean.json
   • stops_grouped.json
8. cd back to /backend
9. Run uvicorn main:app --reload
10. Open frontend/index.html in your browser

You're all set!

Usage

Select any station from the dropdown. Press e to hide it. You'll see Updating... above the table. Once data arrives, departures for the next ~70 minutes will appear. The table refreshes every 30 seconds.

To quit, press CTRL+C in the terminal, then close the browser tab.

Tips and Tricks

• One entry can contain multiple subway lines or multiple tram/bus lines, but never both. If multiple entries exist, the first ones usually belong to the subway.
• If no data appears, check the terminal for 500 Internal Server Error. Some IDs in the registry may not return data.
• Switching stations rapidly may overwhelm the API. If lines are missing, wait a moment and try again.
• When the dropdown is focused, you can type to search for station names.

Links

Data source for the CSV files - data.gv.at

Explanation what the RBL does - strassenbahnjournal.at

The API page - wienerlinien.at/ogd_realtime/

Official documentation for the API (German) - wienerlinien.at

Information page about Open Data - wienerlinien.at

Author

Annabeth Kisling

annabeth@tk-dev-software.com

License and Disclaimer

This project is released under the MIT License (see license.md). I do not own or provide any transport data, nor am I responsible for misuse of the API. Please follow the API fair-use guidelines.