Sbb Opendata MCP server

🚆 sbb-opendata-mcp

🇨🇭 Part of the Swiss Public Data MCP Portfolio

MCP server connecting AI models to Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) open data – passenger frequency, live rail disruptions, infrastructure & real-estate projects, train counts, platform data, rolling stock and station search from data.sbb.ch. No API key required.

🇩🇪 Deutsche Version

Demo

Overview

sbb-opendata-mcp gives AI assistants like Claude direct access to public SBB data – no copy-pasting or manual API calls. A question like "How many passengers passed through Zürich HB every day in 2024?" is answered with real measured data.

The SBB Open Data portal speaks the OpenDataSoft REST API (v2.1). This server translates it into clean Markdown and JSON for the AI model, and adds MCP structuredContent alongside the human-readable text so programmatic clients can consume the underlying records without re-parsing. The server is model-agnostic and works with any MCP-compatible client.

Anchor demo query: "Compare Zürich HB, Bern and Basel SBB by passenger frequency and platform capacity." → More use cases by audience →

Features

• 📊 Passenger frequency – boardings/alightings by station and year (daily averages)
• 🚨 Live rail disruptions – traffic messages, updated every 5 minutes
• 🏗️ Infrastructure projects – station and line construction
• 🏢 Real-estate projects – SBB property development (daily updates)
• 🚆 Trains per segment – train counts per route (SBB, BLS, SOB …)
• 🛤️ Platform data – length, type, area, step-free access
• 🚃 Rolling stock – capacity and year built
• 🔁 Station comparison – up to 10 stations across multiple datasets
• 🔍 Stop search – Swiss DiDok register (all of Switzerland)
• 📦 Dataset catalogue – list all ~89 SBB open datasets
• 🔑 No API key – all data is public and free to use
• ☁️ Dual transport – stdio for Claude Desktop, Streamable HTTP for cloud deployment

Prerequisites

• Python 3.11+
• No API key — all data comes from the public data.sbb.ch portal

Install uv (recommended):

curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

Installation

From PyPI:

pip install sbb-opendata-mcp

Or with uvx (no permanent installation):

uvx sbb-opendata-mcp

For local development, install from a clone in editable mode:

git clone https://github.com/malkreide/sbb-opendata-mcp.git
cd sbb-opendata-mcp
pip install -e ".[dev]"

Quickstart

# Start the server (stdio mode for Claude Desktop)
sbb-opendata-mcp

Try it immediately in Claude Desktop:

"How many people boarded at Zürich HB daily in 2024?"

"Are there any current disruptions on the Swiss rail network?"

Configuration

Environment Variables

The server needs no configuration to run over stdio. The variables below tune the optional Streamable HTTP transport, logging and observability.

Shortened. The full README is on GitHub.