He knows the sins of the Swiss public TRANSPORT

This man knows exactly how it is in Switzerland, the punctuality of the public traffic : Andreas Gutweniger, 45, from Bremgarten bei Bern. Every day, he calculated, which trains, Trams, post cars or buses late to arrive and publicizes the results on his Website punctuality.ch. While he spoke in the autumn due to acute delays in the media, or of the "divers", is his conclusion now at the end of the year: "In the last quarter of the punctuality in long-distance traffic is noticeably worse than usual."

Who would imagine now, "Mr. punctuality" a pedant with the apex and fit perfectly, tie, is wrong. Andreas Gutweniger comes in red Gore-Tex jacket and red sneakers to meet at the train station of Bern and is more reminiscent of a casual nature boy as a seconds counter. He is at least a punctual man? "Not at all." He laughs: "I am more often late than the SBB." Their trains are delayed in 3 of 20 cases, more than 3 minutes.

Gutweniger know, because the public TRANSPORT companies their operating data every night on open transport data.swiss publish. In the 280 Megabyte file Switzerland is included far each stop of buses, postbuses, Trams or trains from the previous day – when the transport was scheduled to arrive according to schedule and when it actually arrived when it was supposed to depart and when it actually is awesome.

A treasure trove for public TRANSPORT-interested

This file gets Gutweniger of the Night automated with a self-written program that calculates, for each Station the delay. Then it looks like the percentage of the arrivals that day were too late. As late trains exceed the scheduled arrival time by a minimum of 3 minutes shall apply in Switzerland. The result is finally displayed on an interactive Swiss map automatically.

Who is punctuality.ch visited, recognizes on the basis of red lines immediately, on which routes in the last days or weeks of public TRANSPORT very late was and what were in the green.

Because he collects the data, can't Gutweniger give its visitors a glimpse into the past, the transport companies offer self: "what is special about my Site is that you can analyze each individual track section – same day or up to one year." The company will publish only single Numbers to be punctual, to each other are not even comparable. According to SBB about their "customer punctuality" is currently at 89 percent. In this figure only the values of a flow but certain stations and, in addition, the number of passengers who arrived too late. Therefore, it is not with Gutwenigers, comparable to the values.

"My forecast is more accurate than the public TRANSPORT companies themselves."Andreas Gutweniger

the idea for the delay of the portal, the business Informatics specialist came in the context of his post-graduate studies in data science, which he completed last year. Just as he was looking for a topic for a study, published in the PUBLIC for the first time, its operating data. So he did want to do something: "Because punctuality is an important quality characteristic, it evaluates delays, but mostly wrong. It was therefore important to provide with the Portal is an objective basis". The public TRANSPORT Fan was employed for ten years as a computer scientist in the SBB, and is also used today as a computer science consultant at the Consulting company Detecon Railways, partly for the Federal government.

the core of The Site is developed in approximately six weeks. Today, he'll let you on a small fire continued to simmer, as a Hobby. Normally, punctuality counts.ch daily 50 to 60 visitors. The Site is, however, subject in the media as it is today, forcing the number of accesses to the servers on a regular basis in the knee. He had, however, no solution for it: to Him, the resources were lacking as a private person. To whom it may interest, but could come back the next day.

Gutwenigers of special Pride are his delay predictions: "My forecast is more accurate than the public TRANSPORT companies themselves," says the German-born self-aware. For this, he used the since the Start of the 18.11.2016 collected data in search of Patterns and calculated with an algorithm resulting in future delays: "we can learn from the past." Otherwise the orbits, calculate their projections by age the art of engineering exclusively with theory-based models and delay minutes add. A rethink was in progress, and there are first steps and empirical data.

Open Data-the idea of the Portal made it possible

A rethink was also necessary in order for a Portal such as Puenklichkeit.ch. It is based in the Open-Data-thoughts, and which is also used in Switzerland, a growing group of followers. In doing so, the requirement that data from all may be used – in particular, those imposed by government and quasi-government Operated and publicly funded facilities. To a third party can build useful services – such as Puenklichkeit.ch. On the other, is to be transparent where money is going or how it is the quality of: "Often, you cannot measure quality objectively. But aspects, which are already measured, should not be publicly accessible, as long as it is personal data", Gutweniger.

ideas for follow-on products or to the development of his Site, he had many. His four children between 6 and 13 years old – but would have priority. Tell it – and disappears as a red point in the commuter flow.

(Sunday newspaper)

Created: 29.12.2018, 23:52 PM