21–29 of 29 posts
GPS is useful, but when planning a route in advance, I'd prefer to know the above.
They offer open access to this information through an API (see toronto.ca/open). I built something to watch the streetcars on a map using that API: http://totransit.ca/
My coworker and I were talking about letting people "check in" to specific streetcars, and tag variables such as "how full is the streetcar?", but I can't see many (any?) people actually doing that.
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…
Combine that with a public transportation system that actually goes somewhere useful in a reasonable amount of time at useful times, and you might have something interesting.
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…
People whose jobs are relatively inflexible when it comes to arrival times would pay. My girlfriend basically has to guess and hope that the train runs on time in order to make it to work - it would be super nice to pull up a site when we wake up and see the current locations of the trains, and an estimated arrival time based on actual data, rather than the MTA's dreams and wishes.
It would also be great to know whether a train has recently left the station at night - should I wait 2 minutes for the next train, or should I just start biking and arrive at my destination before the train even shows?
The Metro Transit system in Minneapolis/St. Paul realtime info: http://www.metrotransit.org/nextrip.aspx The timing isn't perfect, but it gives you good sense of "Is there a bus coming soon." I've been thinking about coding up my own UI as theirs is pretty mediocre of what I want it to do.
The Metro Transit system in Minneapolis/St. Paul realtime info: http://www.metrotransit.org/nextrip.aspx The timing isn't perfect, but it gives you good sense of "Is there a bus coming soon." I've been thinking about coding up my own UI as theirs is pretty mediocre of what I want it to do.
What would you want it to do? I may know some people that could change it...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What would you want it to do? I may know some people that could change it...
I use it to check bus times on my way to and from work. There are two different buslines I can wait for, and no easy way to check which one will be coming first - I have to load each page and compare. Also, loading the site on my android phone almost always results in an error the first time - forcing me to load the page again. I haven't taken the time to debug this yet, but it's always annoying when I'm trying to ch…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I use it to check bus times on my way to and from work. There are two different buslines I can wait for, and no easy way to check which one will be coming first - I have to load each page and compare. Also, loading the site on my android phone almost always results in an error the first time - forcing me to load the page again. I haven't taken the time to debug this yet, but it's always annoying when I'm trying to ch…
Try using http://metrotransit.org/map/ to solve your first problem (click a stop and it will show NexTrip for all the bus routes that stop there). That doesn't solve your second problem though: I have the same problems (and my wife does on her iPhone). I have an Android app started ... maybe I should finish it. Is it worth $0.99 to you? :)
I'd definitely pay $1 if I thought the app would address those two problems. Someone has on open source site for just the NexTrip API, but I haven't had success with it yet: http://metrotransitapi.appspot.com/