Key Features
Tech Stack
https://www.openrailwaymap.org/
I used it recently to find a land and sea route from Southampton to Marrakesh, along with Google maps faint representation of ferry lines, Google doesn't have public transit directions for the trains in Morocco shrug
- train icon looks like standard metro icon but is easily mistaken for a bus
- train detail panel fixed to bottom is awkward on desktop breakpoints. consider floating or integrating to a single sidebar
- consider having main sidebar fixed to bottom for mobile breakpoints
Regarding the arrival times: Yes, that is definitely a bug I need to fix :D I will update it to format properly into hours/minutes.
As for the icons, I am actually using the official SVGs from the BDZ website. I stuck with those because I assume most users will be Bulgarian, and I wanted them to have that familiarity with the official symbols.
One UX issue on desktop: the train detail panel being fixed to the bottom feels awkward. Consider making it a floating panel or sidebar that doesn't block the map.
Also the arrival/departure times showing "hundreds of minutes" is confusing. Anything over 90 minutes should probably display as hours:minutes instead.
Great work overall though. I've seen plenty of official government transit sites that look worse than this.
Would help with usability but overall seeing this is pretty normal in my part of Europe. I've seen 200+ min delays, written just like that, many times.
Is that something that should be improved? Or is that just a “we’ve always done it that way but no one knows why, so we are going to just keep doing it that way” thing?
Regarding the prompt for language and theme: I actually received similar feedback via email. Instead of adding a popup, I decided to make it seamless—I just updated(locally) the app to automatically detect your OS settings for the Theme (Light/Dark) and Time Format (12h/24h) and apply them by default. This way it should "just work" for most users without needing an extra click.
My formula is to ask what it is the user should be doing on the page. Not even what they think they should be doing, what they actually should be doing. Why are they there?
Then you give the visitor only what they need step by step. People are great at screwing things up. Rob them from all opportunities.
In my day job I actually use quite a few train apps. If I have several train or trip numbers in my head everything that is not a search box is wildly annoying.
Wait.. let me slap something together....
https://img.go-here.nl/train-app.png
There, except from a settings icon that is how I would make it.
Enjoy
(I wish someone would make a similar thing for Amtrak, which has a route/progress tracker that only marginally works IME.)
Not affiliated with Hacker News or Y Combinator. We simply enrich the public API with analytics.