REQUEST: static 4/5/6 data from 2024-12-31

Mike Moran

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Jan 4, 2025, 6:58:30 PMJan 4

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Hello everyone.

On New Year's Day, my wife was attacked on a downtown 5 train after boarding at GCT. I have a FOIL request out to the MTA and an open police inquiry with the NYPD. Unfortunately, I do not have the train or car number from the attack, and am trying to piece this information together from the MTA's data.

I have a copy of the most recent static data, which appears to have all data from December 15 onward, but I do not know if this is the scheduled arrival/departure times or the actual.

I am looking for one particular train, at one particular station, on one particular date, at one particular time.

Train: Downtown Express 5. It possibly could be the 4, but my wife says she remembers it being the 5. This should not affect lookup AFAICT
Station: Grand Central Terminal
Date: 2024-12-31
Time: ~11:00 AM Eastern

The train was the first 4/5 that pulled into the station right around 11:00 AM. There were no other express trains that pulled in for the preceding 5-10 minutes. The train also dwelled longer in the station due to the incident. We arrived at GCT around 10:50 and left GCT at 11:07.

I have an open FOIL request to the MTA (R006741-010125), but if I could supplement it with an actual train identifier, that will help them locate any incident reports, security footage, etc. I am also working with the NYPD in this manner.

I know that this is not a usual request on this board. As mentioned, I have the most-recent static dump of data, so even if you can help me parse out approximate search criteria, I can grep through the files to try to track this down.

Any help is much appreciated.

Mike

Stephen Bauman

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Jan 5, 2025, 8:07:36 AMJan 5

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Hi

Sorry to hear about your wife.

Here's a comma delimited list of 4 and 5 downtown expresses that were scheduled to arrive at Grand Central between 10:00:00 and 12:00:00 on 2024-12-31. I got this from the static GTFS feed dated 2024-12-11, that I regularly archive. There may be more recent static GTFS supplemental feeds. I don't archive these but they are available elsewhere. They might provide more accurate information. There is also the GTFS realtime feed, that purports to show the actual arrivals/departures. I do archive these but it will take a bit of work for me to retrieve the data.

the csv data should be suitable to cut and paste into a spreadsheet

"trip_id","arrival_time","departure"time","route_id","trip_headsign"
"AFA24GEN-5113-Weekday-00_056000_5..S03R","10:05:00","10:05:00","5","Flatbush Av-Brooklyn College"
"AFA24GEN-4104-Weekday-00_057000_4..S06R","10:07:00","10:07:00","4","Crown Hts-Utica Av"
"AFA24GEN-5113-Weekday-00_056800_5..S03R","10:13:00","10:13:00","5","Flatbush Av-Brooklyn College"
"AFA24GEN-4104-Weekday-00_057900_4..S06R","10:16:00","10:16:00","4","Crown Hts-Utica Av"
"AFA24GEN-5113-Weekday-00_057400_5..S03R","10:21:00","10:21:00","5","Flatbush Av-Brooklyn College"
"AFA24GEN-4104-Weekday-00_058800_4..S06R","10:25:00","10:25:00","4","Crown Hts-Utica Av"
"AFA24GEN-5113-Weekday-00_058200_5..S03R","10:29:00","10:29:00","5","Flatbush Av-Brooklyn College"
"AFA24GEN-4104-Weekday-00_059600_4..S06R","10:33:00","10:33:00","4","Crown Hts-Utica Av"
"AFA24GEN-5113-Weekday-00_059000_5..S03R","10:37:00","10:37:00","5","Flatbush Av-Brooklyn College"
"AFA24GEN-4104-Weekday-00_060400_4..S06R","10:41:00","10:41:00","4","Crown Hts-Utica Av"
"AFA24GEN-5113-Weekday-00_059800_5..S03R","10:45:30","10:45:30","5","Flatbush Av-Brooklyn College"
"AFA24GEN-4104-Weekday-00_061200_4..S06R","10:49:00","10:49:00","4","Crown Hts-Utica Av"
"AFA24GEN-5113-Weekday-00_060500_5..S03R","10:53:00","10:53:00","5","Flatbush Av-Brooklyn College"
"AFA24GEN-4104-Weekday-00_062000_4..S06R","10:57:00","10:57:00","4","Crown Hts-Utica Av"
"AFA24GEN-5113-Weekday-00_061350_5..S03R","11:01:00","11:01:00","5","Flatbush Av-Brooklyn College"
"AFA24GEN-4104-Weekday-00_062550_4..S06R","11:05:00","11:05:00","4","Crown Hts-Utica Av"
"AFA24GEN-5113-Weekday-00_062100_5..S03R","11:09:00","11:09:00","5","Flatbush Av-Brooklyn College"
"AFA24GEN-4104-Weekday-00_063600_4..S06R","11:13:00","11:13:00","4","Crown Hts-Utica Av"
"AFA24GEN-5113-Weekday-00_062850_5..S03R","11:17:00","11:17:00","5","Flatbush Av-Brooklyn College"
"AFA24GEN-4104-Weekday-00_064400_4..S06R","11:21:00","11:21:00","4","Crown Hts-Utica Av"
"AFA24GEN-5113-Weekday-00_063650_5..S03R","11:25:00","11:25:00","5","Flatbush Av-Brooklyn College"
"AFA24GEN-4104-Weekday-00_064850_4..S06R","11:29:00","11:29:00","4","Crown Hts-Utica Av"
"AFA24GEN-5113-Weekday-00_064450_5..S03R","11:33:00","11:33:00","5","Flatbush Av-Brooklyn College"
"AFA24GEN-4104-Weekday-00_066000_4..S06R","11:37:00","11:37:00","4","Crown Hts-Utica Av"
"AFA24GEN-5113-Weekday-00_065250_5..S03R","11:41:00","11:41:00","5","Flatbush Av-Brooklyn College"
"AFA24GEN-4104-Weekday-00_066700_4..S06R","11:45:00","11:45:00","4","Crown Hts-Utica Av"
"AFA24GEN-5113-Weekday-00_066050_5..S03R","11:49:00","11:49:00","5","Flatbush Av-Brooklyn College"
"AFA24GEN-4104-Weekday-00_067500_4..S06R","11:53:00","11:53:00","4","Crown Hts-Utica Av"
"AFA24GEN-5113-Weekday-00_066850_5..S03R","11:57:00","11:57:00","5","Flatbush Av-Brooklyn College"

hope this helps.

Steve

Tim Treese

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Jan 5, 2025, 10:05:26 AMJan 5

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Mike -- Similar to what Steve said, I too keep records of the real-time train data. This includes the MTA's trip_id field. I am not sure how much this will help -- IIRC the police generally want the train ID (e.g. the 4-digit unique train number displayed in each train), however that's not included in the published minutely data. The trip_id is set by the MTA, though, so they may be able to link that to the actual train ID. Note that trip_id is set dynamically when a train departs its origin, so it will not have any clear correlation to the static planned data.

Below are the results of a query for all south-bound (downtown) trains at Grand Central (station_id 631) on new years eve between 10:40AM and 11:20AM. I've included 6 and 6X trains just in case.

The arrival_time field is the time the MTA said the train will arrive (arrival and departure are not distinguished, and these are certainly not down to the actual second, but should be within a minute of reality). query_time is the time when the MTA published the arrival_time (it's the time of my query that I've recorded).

The 060500_5..S03R train below is the closest to your description -- It's a downtown 5 train that stopped at Grand Central at 10:56.

Best of luck to you and your wife!

arrival_time	station_id	route_id	direction	mta_trip_id	query_time
2024-12-31 10:41:04	631	6	S	060400_6..S03R	2024-12-31 10:41:39
2024-12-31 10:41:26	631	5	S	059800_5..S03R	2024-12-31 10:41:39
2024-12-31 10:43:41	631	6X	S	060200_6..S02R	2024-12-31 10:43:39
2024-12-31 10:47:28	631	4	S	061200_4..S06R	2024-12-31 10:47:39
2024-12-31 10:49:27	631	6	S	061200_6..S03R	2024-12-31 10:49:39
2024-12-31 10:51:30	631	6X	S	061000_6..S02R	2024-12-31 10:51:39
2024-12-31 10:55:46	631	5	S	060500_5..S03R	2024-12-31 10:56:39
2024-12-31 10:58:23	631	4	S	062000_4..S06R	2024-12-31 10:58:39
2024-12-31 10:59:27	631	6	S	062000_6..S03R	2024-12-31 10:59:39
2024-12-31 11:01:27	631	6X	S	061800_6..S02R	2024-12-31 11:01:39
2024-12-31 11:03:15	631	4	S	062550_4..S06R	2024-12-31 11:03:39
2024-12-31 11:04:41	631	6	S	062800_6..S03R	2024-12-31 11:04:39
2024-12-31 11:06:26	631	6X	S	062600_6..S02R	2024-12-31 11:06:39
2024-12-31 11:08:16	631	5	S	061350_5..S03R	2024-12-31 11:08:39
2024-12-31 11:10:49	631	6	S	063600_6..S03R	2024-12-31 11:10:39
2024-12-31 11:12:27	631	4	S	063600_4..S06R	2024-12-31 11:12:39
2024-12-31 11:14:37	631	5	S	062100_5..S03R	2024-12-31 11:14:39
2024-12-31 11:17:40	631	5	S	062850_5..S03R	2024-12-31 11:18:39
2024-12-31 11:19:14	631	6X	S	063400_6..S02R	2024-12-31 11:19:39

-Tim

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Mike Moran

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Jan 6, 2025, 9:18:29 AMJan 6

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Thank you all! This is extremely helpful for my FOIL request. I really appreciate the help and quick responses here.

My biggest concern is that the request isn't answered until after some expiration on any available security footage. The 060500_5..S03R train does sound correct, especially since I recall the following train being a few minutes behind (station announcement right before the incident train pulled in).

Thank you for the note on the trip_id as well. Using that first table, the pre-planned trip_id would be AFA24GEN-5113-Weekday-00_060500_5..S03R, arriving a few minutes late, which seems appropriate too. But based on the notes, this might not be the actual trip-id that was set the day-off, since it's from the pre-planned schedule?