iCaltrain: Caltrain Schedule for Mobile Phones and iPhone

iCaltrain has been updated to reflect the new, evening train schedule.

“Effective Monday, March 3, Caltrain will add two evening local trains to its weekday schedule. The additional service will fill a gap in evening service in both directions and make the schedule easier for customers to remember. Trains will depart every hour on the half-hour from San Jose from 7:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. From San Francisco trains would depart every hour on the half-hour from 7:30 p.m. until 10:30 p.m.; however, the final southbound train will still depart from San Francisco at 12:01 a.m.” via Caltrain.com

“TransitCampBayArea will highlight the public transit system in the Bay Area Region and will bring together transit officials and citizens to discuss stuff like: getting schedules on the go, the future of the Bay Area transit system, experiences and observations (not complaints, though), the websites, cool ideas for attracting more riders, etc.”

Based on popular request, I’ve added a web clip bookmark icon for the iPhone (1.1.3+) and iPod Touch. Check it out by pressing ‘+‘ in Safari, and select ‘Add to Home Screen’.

Thanks to all who sent in ideas and even sample icon designs!

The new build of Safari in iPhone update 1.1.1 removed the support of the CSS style “box-sizing”, which caused the iCaltrain home screen to overflow the screen in portrait mode.  The solution was to replace “box-sizing” with “-webkit-box-sizing”. (Thanks to Chris B. for confirming the issue.)

Did you know that Atherton is serviced by Caltrain on weekends? I do now, thanks to John S., and I’ve added it to the list of stations.

Coming soon in 2008: real-time train delays arrival times using the “Real Time Train Predictive Arrival GPS System”. I’ll add these real-time updates to iCaltrain once it becomes available on 511.org.

[via Mercury News]

iCaltrain is now available for web-enabled cell phones at m.iCaltrain.com. The primary design goal was keeping it as lightweight as possible while supporting different screen sizes. Similar to the iPhone version (iCaltrain.com), it’s easy to access the return trip schedule.

• Python was used to parse the web schedules posted at Caltrain.com. The html tables weren’t identical and some tags were missing as well. Also, the times were in 12hr format without am/pm.
• iUI was used for the nice sliding effects and UI’s look and feel.
• PHP is used to dynamically generate the search form (to remember the last trip) and search results, and to redirect iPhone users to the app.

I’ve been commuting on Caltrain for the last few months, and have always wanted to look up the schedule on my cell phone. I finally got around to spend some time putting it together for the iPhone using the iUI. Simply point your iPhone to iCaltrain.com and you will see the app. Safari users can test drive it at iCaltrain.com/iphone.php.

iCaltrain Features:

• Easy access to reverse trip schedule for the return trip.
• Remembers the last search performed for those frequent trips.

Coming next:

• Mobile web version for those without the iPhone.
• Show only the next trains instead of the full schedule.