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An idea (to fix public transport schedules).

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Re: An idea (to fix public transport schedules).

#11

Post by dmbass »

untog wrote: post #6

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.

There are a lot of stations (numbered lines only, I think) that have "time to next subway" signs which I've found to be pretty accurate. I'm not sure if there is an API for subway info, but they run so regularly (~5 mins or less during the day and 30 mins at late night) that it's generally not that important to get that info. I'm not going to take a taxi because the subway is 15 mins away.

Re: An idea (to fix public transport schedules).

#12

Post by darklajid »

I thought about this mobile solution as well, as a way to get at data that in my (not humble anymore. Geez, just open up) opinion should be given away by the companies running the service. I like the UK datasets.

I'm coming from Germany. Although everyone complains about public transportation (and the Deutsche Bahn especially) it generally works. If you're at a bus stop, you generally get a nice timetable with all stations and arrival times for each of them.

Now I'm in Tel Aviv: If I'm lucky I've got a plan that shows me the route and ~maybe~ when the bus leaves the first stop. If I'm far away, this is useless..

Re: An idea (to fix public transport schedules).

#14

Post by andrewem »

Boston's MBTA seems to be leading the way with this kind of information, and with making it open to developers. http://mbta.com/rider_tools/apps/ lists dozens of web sites and mobile apps which use data about the MBTA's buses and trains.

The MBTA's bus data (via http://www.nextbus.com, the giant in this industry) tends to be pretty good, though sometimes buses disappear from listings and reappear, and sometimes the predictions aren't very accurate, but they're definitely useful. Subway train data is only fed into the system once a train leaves the end of the line, so there tends not to be data for inbound trains for the first several stops. Commuter rail data is still different, because trains are so much less frequent and people tend to aim to be on a particular train which they know based on its scheduled time.

Other transit agencies are much more closed about their data. For instance, DC's WMATA requires you to sign up for an API key and access all data using their web services, even though their bus data comes from NextBus so you'd think they could let you hit NextBus's web services for their data.

There's also the brand-new GTFS-realtime spec from Google, which is a Protocol Buffer format for getting vehicle positions and so on very efficiently. The idea is that you'd be able to get the current locations of all the vehicles in a large system, like the MBTA, in a single request.

(Shameless plug: one of the MBTA apps listed in the app catalog is my web site http://www.mbtainfo.com)

Re: An idea (to fix public transport schedules).

#16

Post by yellowbkpk »

Just about every bus/train will already have a GPS device on it (to help dispatchers and for safety), it's just a matter of convincing the transit authority to release that data into the public.

Minneapolis's MetroTransit, for example, has the ability to do realtime tracking but chose to go with a "n minutes until next bus" system rather than show moving dots on a map.

Re: An idea (to fix public transport schedules).

#19

Post by thingie »

Well, if our local transit company has a GPS module in every its vehicle on a route and can watch all of them nearly real-time ("nearly" is something like updates every 30 seconds), and we are in Eastern Europe, then any transit authority can. There is no need to "crowdsource" it.

On the other hand, they aren't very good in communicating the information they have. The best thing we have is this: http://idsjmk.jrbrno.cz/ and Google Maps.

There are another problems that are not mentioned at all in the article. Service irregularities, either planned or not. There are frequent tram track repairs, street closures… So, what changes are there on my route, if any? Was the stop that I'm planning to get on moved behind the corner? Where exactly can I get on? And exactly means exactly, cellphone GPS can't tell you decisively if you are at the right side of the road, for example. And that is a crucial difference if you are planning to get on a bus.

And what if I'm waiting for a tram, and there was an accident somewhere and all the trams are delayed. What now? Was a reserve bus dispatched to replace it? When will it arrive? And where, if it's a segregated tramway and the bus can't use the stop?

Re: An idea (to fix public transport schedules).

#20

Post by brianbreslin »

I can't honestly see passengers paying extra for this. I see the transit company/department as the customer. In reality they already gps track all their fleets in the US, its just a matter of exposing the data in a digestible format.

If they opened up APIs, some enterprising individual could build apps on top of it, and sell the apps or run ads across.

Sidenote, what about the security issues related to sharing this data? Are there any?

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