Live Transit

Live status, alerts, line maps and vehicle positions for public transport networks worldwide, straight from the operators. Metros, trains, trams, buses, ferries and airport boards from about 300 sources in dozens of countries, normalized into one data model and served as a website, a REST API and an MCP server.

Live at livetransit.vercel.app.

• Website: a live map of every vehicle and line, network and line pages with status and alerts, airport boards.

• REST API: /api/v1/*, documented at /api/v1/openapi.json and on the /developers page.

• MCP server: /api/mcp (Streamable HTTP), with tools such as search, network_status, line_status, disruptions, airport and vehicles_near. A plain-text guide for agents is at /llms.txt.

How it works

• Connectors (src/connectors/) each read one operator feed (GTFS-Realtime, a JSON or XML API, a flight board, or a scraped status page) and return alerts, line statuses, vehicles, stations and departures in the shared model in src/lib/types.ts. Around 230 standard GTFS-Realtime feeds come from the Mobility Database catalog (scripts/gen-global-gtfs.ts); the rest are written by hand.

• Ingest (src/ingest/runner.ts) polls each source on its own interval from a once-a-minute cron, with backoff for failing feeds, and stores the latest snapshot in Postgres.

• Line catalog: most realtime feeds name routes only by id, so each source is linked to its static GTFS schedule (src/connectors/static-gtfs.json, generated by bun scripts/gen-static-gtfs.ts). Routes, colors and simplified shapes are imported into the routes table by reading only routes.txt, trips.txt and shapes.txt over HTTP Range requests, so even 500 MB feeds import in about a minute. On every ingest, vehicles get route names and colors from the catalog, and sources without per-line status get one line per route, with state derived from the alerts that name it.

• Realtime reads: GET /api/v1/sources/{id}/live reads the operator's vehicle feed on request (cached for about 10 seconds) when the connector supports it. The maps poll it and animate vehicles between updates.

• Maps use MapLibre GL with OpenFreeMap tiles built from OpenStreetMap data. No API key needed.

Related MCP server: TfL MCP Server

Running locally

Requires Bun.

bun install
cp .env.example .env.local

# A local Postgres. Any Postgres 15+ with pg_trgm works; this one needs no install.
bunx pglite-server --db=.localdb/pg --port=5433 -e pg_trgm --max-connections=4

bun run db:migrate             # apply src/db/schema.sql (idempotent)
bun run ingest --force         # poll every source once
bun run import:static          # import line catalogs and route shapes (a few minutes for all sources)
bun run dev                    # http://localhost:3000

Other scripts:

Deploying

Built for Vercel with a Postgres database such as Neon. Set DATABASE_URL and CRON_SECRET; the crons in vercel.json poll sources every minute, prune old rows hourly and refresh line catalogs.

Data and licenses

The code is MIT licensed (see LICENSE). Transit data belongs to the operators and is used under each feed's own terms; every source lists its operator, license and endpoints on its network page and in the API. This project is not affiliated with any operator and is not a substitute for official information.