The next MARC trains, on your command line.
This program parses GTFS files to find all the departures and arrivals between two stops.
Although it's designed for the MARC -- a commuter train that bridges Baltimore and DC -- the code is potentially adaptable to other transit systems that publish GTFS files.
Running Trains without any arguments will print the upcoming trains today:
======================================
🦀 TRAINS TO BALTIMORE PENN STATION 🦀
======================================
[10:25 AM----1h3m---->11:28 AM]
12:30 PM----58m----->01:28 PM
02:05 PM----1h5m---->03:10 PM
04:30 PM----59m----->05:29 PM
05:30 PM----59m----->06:29 PM
07:30 PM----1h7m---->08:37 PM
================================
🏛 TRAINS TO DC UNION STATION 🏛
================================
[08:55 AM----1h------>09:55 AM]
11:00 AM----1h2m---->12:02 PM
12:40 PM----1h------>01:40 PM
02:00 PM----1h1m---->03:01 PM
04:05 PM----1h------>05:05 PM
06:00 PM----1h5m---->07:05 PM
You can also pass tomorrow, a weekday like sunday or a date mm/dd as arguments to pull up trains on those days.
This runs entirely offline. But to open the mta's live schedules on your browser, you can pass live or for example saturday live.
To customize stops, emojis, and header, edit options.txt in the files folder.
NOTE: I have only tested this with the MARC-Penn line between Union Station and Penn Station. I am not liable for any consequences of a missed train on account of using this program. Please don't sue me if you miss your cousin's wedding.
You will need java 22. To determine your java version, open up your Terminal and enter java --version. Update or install here.
Open Terminal and type
chmod +x with the space
Drag run.sh into the window, then hit enter. Then open run.sh with Terminal (you can drag it back into the window and hit enter).
I find this program most useful if I can just type something like trains tomorrow or trains friday in Terminal.
To set this up:
Open trains.sh in a text editor, and change the following line:
cd ~/Downloads/marc-terminal-main/src
Edit what comes after cd to wherever the src folder is stored (Cmd+option+cto copy the file path in mac).
You won't have to do the above steps if you unzipped into your Downloads folder and plan to keep this there.
Next, in Terminal enter,
cd /usr/local/bin
then
open .
Drag trains.sh into this folder.
Enter
chmod +x /usr/local/bin/trains.sh
The final step depends on if you're running zsh or bash as your Terminal shell. If you don't know what this means just do both.
If zsh then enter
nano ~/.zshrc
If bash then
nano ~/.bash_profile
This will launch a text editor. Add the line
alias trains=/usr/local/bin/trains.sh
to the end, save with Control+X. Restart Terminal. Enter trains to ensure it works. Done!
The Maryland Transit Adminstration publishes trains schedules in GTFS format, which standardizes public transit information. This program parses the data, constructs the desired schedules from it, and compares them against the current (or specified) time and date. That's basically it.
On start up, the program parses all the GTFS file afresh, with no caching of any kind. This is computationally wasteful, but since it only takes a few seconds at most, I wasn't motivated to implement some kind of serialization. However, it shouldn't be a massive undertaking to do so and would improve performance. This could be desired if more resource taxing features are added, such as live data.
The MTA also offers real time transit infromation using GTFS-RT. This could be availed of to alert users of delays and schedule changes. I was originally going to add this but got lazy, and settled with the URL launcher for now.