Exciting news about buses

[davidn]

My giant floppy ears were alerted to a promising development in the MBTA yesterday by the Livejournal community that was set up to moan about its usual ineptitude - they've got together with some sort of national online service provider called NextBus to provide an experimental feed that makes the GPS locations of its buses freely available.

Come on, 111! Come on, 116!

What this means in less dull terms is that it's now possible for people who are web-inclined to tap into that feed and find out where buses are and how long it's likely to take them to arrive at their destinations - and therefore yet another project has been added to my already groaning pile. Only five routes are represented during the trial period and none of them are anywhere near the places I actually travel in Boston, but I spent some time yesterday creating a small page to collect the predictions for individual stops together, then didn't sleep at all due to having some terrible nightmares about buses.

I'm very much looking forward to it being expanded to the rest of the system and taking the guesswork out of the CT2's largely fictional timetable - for now, I've tragically been spending my compile time watching the 111-117 buses race each other to Broadway and Fourth Street remotely via the Internet.

Comments

[siderea]

Hey, I wanted to let you know how madly I am in love with this app. I use it the three days each week I commute via 114/116/117, via my Palm T|X running the Blazer browser. It has been the most amazing improvement in my quality of living to be able to not have to wait out for a bus in the cold and wet, but in my nice warm office. To say nothing of how much it matters to my personal safety: I'm a woman (professionally dressed) catching a bus alone, late in the evening, in a rough part of town. Your application is making a real positive difference in my life. You must never, ever take it down. :)

Do you take donations?

[davidn]

What a nice thing to wake up to :) Thank you so much! I'm glad that it's helping someone out, as I live too far away from the bus routes for it to actually be useful to me. It takes the data straight from MBTA's feed, so it'll stay up as long as it exists - and hopefully the MBTA will expand it to other routes sooner rather than later :) Actually, would you mind if I quoted your post as a testimonial on the MassDOT developers group? It may even speed them up a bit.

Donations are gratefully accepted at wleaderpicone@gmail.com on Paypal, if you have the inclination :) Even this message alone might drive me to work on it a bit again, because it's always bothered me that the bus stops don't come out in order at first...

Thanks!

[igorium.livejournal.com]

Are those Transport Tycoon icons?

[davidn]

They are, well spotted :)

[xkeeper.livejournal.com]

I really hope this feed shows when buses are broken down and displays the smoke trail and/or explosion. That would just make my day.

[davidn]

That's a great idea, actually - the feed doesn't do it itself (in its current form, anyway), but if I can make it detect when a bus hasn't moved in a long time, that'll definitely be the icon I use :)