Pullcord 🚌

Real-time MARTA bus tracker. Pull the cord. Catch your ride.

Live:

• buses: bus.marta.io
• trains: marta.io

Features

• Live GPS tracking — bus positions updated every 30s via MARTA GTFS-RT
• ETA predictions — three-tier system (active, next trip, scheduled)
• Hero countdown — biggest bus ticks every second
• Pull the Cord — web push notification when your bus is close (2/5/10/15 min threshold)
• Direction swap — tap any prediction to track the other way
• Favorites — save stops for quick access
• Light/dark mode — follows system preference
• Mobile-first — designed for standing at a bus stop in the sun

Stack

• Runtime: Bun
• Server: Hono (SSR JSX)
• Database: SQLite (bun:sqlite) — GTFS static data
• Map: Leaflet + CartoDB tiles
• CSS: Tailwind v4
• Fonts: Inter (body) + JetBrains Mono (data)
• Push: Web Push API + VAPID

Setup

# Install dependencies
bun install

# Download GTFS data and build database
./tools/refresh-gtfs.sh

# Copy env template
cp .env.example .env
# Edit .env with your MARTA API key and VAPID keys

# Build CSS
bun x @tailwindcss/cli -i src/styles/app.css -o public/styles.css

# Run
bun run src/index.ts

Environment Variables

MARTA_API_KEY=       # MARTA GTFS-RT API key
PORT=4200            # Server port
VAPID_PUBLIC_KEY=    # Web Push VAPID public key (generate with web-push)
VAPID_PRIVATE_KEY=   # Web Push VAPID private key
VAPID_EMAIL=         # Contact email for VAPID (mailto:you@example.com)

GTFS Refresh

MARTA publishes schedule updates periodically. Refresh with:

./tools/refresh-gtfs.sh

This downloads the latest GTFS feed, rebuilds the SQLite database, and restarts the service. Consider running weekly via cron.

Docs

• docs/BUILD_SPEC.md — original build specification
• docs/DEV_FLOW.md — development workflow patterns
• docs/TIMESTAMP_ANALYSIS.md — MARTA data freshness analysis
• docs/VEHICLE_VS_TRIPS_ANALYSIS.md — vehicle vs trip update feed analysis
• docs/EXPERIMENTS_REVIEW.md — UI experiment comparison notes

License

MIT