An idea (to fix public transport schedules).

Nextbus.com already does this with several public transportation systems, including Boston and San Francisco. I'm actually in the process of putting together a service to alert riders when the bus is about to arrive, based on that data. It's still in beta, it only supports Boston, it's ugly as all hell and probably broken in places, but if anyone wants to look around, it's live here:

http://www.buscalling.com

PS: if anyone wants to beta-test, let me know!

This was done at univ. of michigan as a student project: http://mbus.pts.umich.edu/

There's a pilot trial going on in NYC, too:

http://bustime.mta.info/

Has API access and everything. I look forward to it being deployed further, though I suppose it won't make it to the subways owing to them being underground.

Thanks for the link to this. Very cool! While the OP describes a crowd-sourced solution, this seems to be a setup where 1 GPS is attached per vehicle.

On seeing this, I have a reaction that I'd like to share. Someone at this University had vision. They seem to have less than 20 buses in their fleet. However, we're still talking about a serious investment (It isn't just the phones, it is also data plans. They might be using their campus wifi network which would significantly lower their costs).

I've tried doing this in other places some time ago. However, it was impossible to get anyone to invest in such a thing. What do you do when you are in this situation? I've done mock-ups, buying initial hardware with my own $$, but still. I guess in our society, pretty much everything comes down to economic value. On one hand, it makes sense. On the other, it makes me sad.

Ljuba Miljkovic wrote an interesting thesis for his iSchool and implemented an app which I think is one of the best designed out there.

http://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/files/student_projects/Trans...

"Transporter: Real-time Public Transit Designed for the Bay Area"

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/transporter-real-time-public/...