About Headway
Headway is a free live map of passenger trains in the United States. It is made by Axis Maps and is independent of the agencies whose trains it shows. It runs in a web browser at headwaytransit.com and as an iPhone app.
About
What it shows
Headway puts the trains reported by the 24 U.S. passenger rail agencies it covers on one map: where each train is, how late it is running, and when it reaches its next stops, wherever the agency publishes that information. Every train, line and station has its own page.
Some people open Headway to check the train they are about to catch. Others use it to watch the network: a line through the day, a station's departures, a long-distance train on its way across the country. You do not need to be riding a train to use it.
Who makes it
Headway is built by Axis Maps, the company behind axismaps.ai, on Axis, its platform for live maps.
Headway is not run by, affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Amtrak or any other agency it shows. Agency names are trademarks of their owners. Headway reads the data each agency publishes and serves it from its own servers, so it can lag the agency's own systems, and it comes with no claim that it is accurate, complete or timely.
Web and iPhone
Both show the live map, the list of running trains, pages for trains, lines and stations, search, and saved trains and stations. The iPhone app adds Live Activities, which follow a train on the Lock Screen, and alerts. The website has neither.
Headway is free on both, and following a train on the Lock Screen is free. Headway Pro, an optional subscription on iPhone, starts it automatically for a trip you save, between your stops, and adds alerts.
Is Headway a flight tracker for trains?
Partly. Headway shows the passenger trains its agencies report on one live map, with delays and upcoming stops where the agency publishes them, and a page for every train. It does not show freight trains or agencies outside the list below, and it puts a train on the map only when its agency reports it live. Some trains are placed on the map from predicted times rather than a reported position. What Headway can show follows what each agency publishes.
Coverage
Headway shows trains from these 24 agencies.
| Agency | In Headway |
|---|---|
| Amtrak | Intercity trains across the United States |
| Brightline | Intercity trains between Miami and Orlando, Florida |
| Caltrain | Commuter rail between San Francisco and Gilroy |
| CapMetro Rail | MetroRail Red Line, Austin, Texas |
| CTA 'L' | Red, Blue, Brown, Green, Orange, Pink, Purple and Yellow Lines, Chicago |
| FrontRunner | Commuter rail between Ogden, Salt Lake City and Provo, Utah |
| LIRR | Commuter rail on Long Island (MTA) |
| MARC | Maryland commuter rail |
| MBTA Commuter Rail | Commuter rail, Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority |
| MBTA Subway | Red, Orange, Blue and Green Lines and the Mattapan trolley |
| Metra | Commuter rail, Chicago |
| Metrolink | Commuter rail, Southern California |
| Metro-North | Commuter rail (MTA) |
| NJ Transit Rail | Commuter rail, New Jersey |
| NYC Subway | Subway trains in New York City (MTA New York City Transit) |
| RTD Denver | Commuter rail, Denver |
| SEPTA | Regional Rail, southeastern Pennsylvania |
| South Shore Line | Commuter rail between Chicago and South Bend |
| SunRail | Commuter rail between DeLand and Poinciana, Central Florida |
| Staten Island Railway | St George to Tottenville (MTA New York City Transit) |
| Tri-Rail | Commuter rail, South Florida |
| VRE | Virginia Railway Express commuter rail |
| WeGo Star | Commuter rail, Nashville |
| WMATA Metrorail | Metrorail, Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority |
Caltrain data provided by 511.org. MBTA data provided by MassDOT and the MBTA. LIRR, Metro-North, NYC Subway and Staten Island Railway data obtained from the MTA. RTD data courtesy of the Regional Transportation District. CTA data provided by Chicago Transit Authority.
Not in Headway
- Freight trains.
- Buses and other services these agencies run that are not in the table, such as RTD's light rail.
- Agencies not in the table.
For most agencies, a train the agency runs but does not report live still appears on the website from its timetable, marked No live data.
Data and methodology
Where the data comes from
Every agency in Headway publishes a timetable and a live feed, and Headway reads both. For every agency except Amtrak, the live feed is GTFS-Realtime, a standard format for train positions and predicted times. For Amtrak, Headway reads the train status Amtrak publishes for its online train map, alongside Amtrak's published timetable.
Delays come from the agency's predicted times. When an agency has published no prediction for a train, the website says so rather than calling it on time. When an agency publishes predicted times but no position, Headway can place the train between stations from those times; that dot is an estimate, not a reported position.
How current it is
Two times are worth telling apart.
- How old the information is. A train page's status carries the time of the latest report Headway has for that run, such as "as of 9:41 PM". A dated run's page shows "Source data last changed 12m ago" instead, which counts from the last time the agency's data for that train changed, not from its latest report: a train whose position and predicted times hold steady can be re-reported every few seconds and still read 12 minutes.
- When your page last refreshed. headwaytransit.com asks Headway's servers for changes about every 30 seconds while the page is on screen. A refresh brings news only when the agency has published some.
Headway's servers check each agency's live feed on a schedule set per agency, from every few seconds to every two and a half minutes. Agencies update their feeds at their own pace too, so no single interval applies to every train.
Choosing the right run
A train keeps its number on every day it runs. Headway gives each train number one page, such as Amtrak Train 8, and each day's run its own dated page. The train page lists the runs Headway holds right now: for most agencies, today's and tomorrow's from the timetable, and earlier runs still under way or recently finished. It opens on the newest run under way, or on the next scheduled run if none is. Pick the run by its date. A long-distance train can have two runs en route at once: the Empire Builder, Train 8, takes more than a day between Seattle and Chicago.
Some agencies, such as RTD and WMATA, publish no train numbers, so Headway names their runs by the agency's trip ID.
When a train disappears or stops updating
- The run finished. A finished run leaves the list of running trains. Its train page keeps its final status for a while.
- The feed went quiet. If an agency's feed has not reported a run for 15 minutes while it is still under way, the train page says Live data is stale and gives the time of the last report.
- No position was published. A train can be in the list of running trains without a dot on the map: its agency published predicted times but no position Headway could use, or only the timetable knows it (No live data).
- It was cancelled. Its status reads Cancelled.
What the website's status words mean
- Live data is stale
- The agency's feed has not reported this run for 15 minutes while it is still under way. Treat its last delay and position as out of date.
- No live data
- Headway knows this run only from the timetable. The agency has not reported it live.
- Delay unknown
- The agency's feed reports this run but gives no predicted time to work out a delay from. The website does not call it on time.
- Live data unavailable — retrying, or Live data stalled — retrying
- Shown on the map when your page cannot get updates from Headway's servers; "Last update" says when it last did. These describe the page's connection to Headway, not any one train.
Questions and corrections
Email [email protected]. See also Support and the privacy policy.