Help me save the world, but don't tell Marcos: a train data Secret Santa

I know there is no ‘O’ line goddammit, you smartass

Let me explain by breaking down the headline.

Save the world

Imagine a simple technology that helps millions of people save billions of minutes every day.

With all the time the technology gave back to humanity, wouldn’t that be a little bit like saving the world?*

Now, imagine if I made this technology as a Secret Santa and dedicated it to some guy called Marcos who I vaguely know through a Discord server.

Luckily, you don’t have to imagine.

Marcos

Marcos is a guy I’m on a Discord with, along with a bunch of other creative technologists**.

Here are some things I know about Marcos:

• He’s a nice guy

• He’s a creative technologist

• He lives in New York

• He loves trains

Every year, our Discord does a Secret Santa. The idea of the Secret Santa is more or less: make a creative-ish and technology-ish gift that the other person might like.

Me

Like Marcos, I’m also a creative technologist and I also love trains.

I used to commute on the London tube every day at rush hour, and I became obsessed with getting on the train at the perfect door to be first out of the station on the other end. I must have saved whole minutes, every day by doing this.

I even bought an app, Station Master, which told me the precise carriage and door for every station on the London Underground, so I’d know exactly where to get on the train (Exit Strategy does something similar for the NYC Subway).

A train data Secret Santa

That got me wondering:

What if this information existed, for free, for every train in the world?

And what if we created a global movement to spread the information far and wide to everyone, not just a few neurotic optimizers like me?

We’d help…

• Ordinary commuters save a bit of time

• Tired mums and dads push buggies less

• Elderly people navigate stations more easily

• Busy businesspeople do busy things busier, creating more busy dollars in the busy economy which busily trickle down to us all, making GDP up to 1,000% busier

…whether at Akihabara, Auber, Anding Men, Akshardham or Attaba.

I knew this global movement could change the world, but then I became addicted to Robin Hobb’s magisterial 16 book Realm of the Elderlings series which ruined my work and personal life for several years, gave me severe RSI from tapping my Kindle too often, and made me forget all about optimizing trains.

Until I drew Marcos in the Discord’s Secret Santa a few weeks ago.

I realized that it was fate. Marcos and his love of trains could be the trigger that made me finally solve this problem, once and for all.

I resolved to start the global movement I had once dreamed of, create a technology to save the world, and most importantly, hand it over as a gift to this guy who I only barely know, but, I’d like to reiterate, seems really nice.

That’s why today, without further ado, I’m excited to introduce:

MARCOS

Meet the Metro And Rail Carriage Optimization System:

Dummy data! I promise I know Paddington is not on the Central Line

MARCOS is two things:

1. A crowdsourced database of which carriage door, for which exit, for which station

2. A tool to tell you which carriage door, for which exit, for which station

MARCOS is built for crowdsourcing simplicity, so the database is a bunch of YAML files hosted on GitHub.

I’ve kept the format as minimal as possible, with each YAML file specifying the platforms at a station, the direction of travel, and doors to stand at for exits (I’m sure there will need to be extra complexity in the future, but for now it feels fine).

Exits are detailed by e.g. 1.2, which means ‘first carriage from the front, second door’.

station_name: Tottenham Court Road

platforms:
  central:
    eastbound:
      door_side: right
      exits:
        northern: 4.2
        oxford_street_east: 1.2
    westbound:
      door_side: left
      exits:
        northern: 1.2
        oxford_street_east: 1.5

  northern:
    southbound:
      door_side: right
      exits:
        central: 1.3
        street: 6.3
    northbound:
      door_side: right
      exits:
        central:eastbound: 1.3
        street: 6.3

But MARCOS has a dirty little secret.

Help me

I’d like Marcos to really enjoy his Secret Santa gift, MARCOS. I’d like him to have not just a merry Christmas, but a very very very merry Christmas, ho ho ho, and also a happy New Year.

But the dirty little secret is, MARCOS currently has zero real information in it. It’s a shell.

That’s where you come in.

Help me save the world, by crowdsourcing train door information, and help me blow Marcos’s mind, by sharing MARCOS far and wide.

Let’s build a global movement in Marcos’s name that quite literally changes the course of humanity, as it leads to millions of people heading towards slightly different doors on their train.

I’m asking you to do one of these three things:

1. Star the GitHub repository

2. Add a station, using the instructions in the README, and submit a pull request

3. Share MARCOS, particularly with other train lovers who’ll add stations

But don’t tell

Before you do that, remember: SSSSHHHHHHHH 🤫. This is a Secret Santa. Our Discord is opening gifts on the evening of Sunday 21st, EST.

So please, please, help me save the world — but whatever you do, DON’T TELL MARCOS.

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*No, not at all. But let’s pretend for a moment.

**Along with everyone else on the server, I have basically no clue what that means.