Further bus developments

[davidn]

Last November I was very excited that the MBTA was experimenting with an XML feed that gathered the locations of buses along five of their routes and made the data available to web developers, and I wrote a PHP page to keep track of them even though none of them were routes that were at all useful to me.

The trial still hasn't expanded, but someone has now provided something of a substitute for the interim period - Nickolai Zeldovich's MBTA map shows the last known location of all buses with GPS units, and tries its best to guess what route they're on based on where they've just been. (Also sometimes puts them in Bolivia or the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, but that's a separate data problem.)

I tried this on Monday with the CT2, the route that I sometimes take home, leaving the office when I saw one of them approaching a couple of streets away. I drew into sight of the bus stop just in time to see it leave, so it seems that I need to work on my timing to compensate for the delay in updates until the actual time predictions are in place.

But after missing it, I opened up the computer, got on to the nearby bookshop's free wireless and was able to watch the buses approaching remotely, matching up the ID numbers painted on their sides to the ones that I was seeing coming past in front of me - it was amazing. Well, perhaps I'm just easily amused, but more importantly, it's striking how much the wait is improved when you can see something coming, and don't have to just stand around wondering if you're ever going to be picked up or not. This map made me enjoy waiting for the CT2, and as far as I'm concerned, that puts it well into Nobel Prize territory.

Comments

[ethelfleda.livejournal.com]

Dundee bus shelters have those countdown timers in them, but sometimes they're broke and you just get the time the thing's supposed to be due.

And when it flashed up DUE in big capital letters this is usually terribly premature. DUE actually means 'about two streets away, really quite close overall, but not what you'd actually call really really imminent'.

[davidn]

It says something that Dundee (and even Aberdeen) can have stuff like this before a city like Boston.

The way that they've chosen to do it, though, has worked out rather well, saving themselves the work by just making the data available for those who know how to use it. It feels rather special just now, having a secret Marauder's Map of buses, in a way much like tapping into the Matrix.

[ethelfleda.livejournal.com]

I do wish that they would do that for Dundee actually - I live really close to the bus stop, and being able to track the buggers from the nice warm inside rather than going out there to stand at the stop would be nice.

But on the other hand I could see myself cutting it finer and finer until I missed the bugger and ended up waiting for the next one anyway!

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

In Toronto, the TTC buses are all over the map (literally and figuratively) when it comes to scheduling. There's online schedules, but the drivers never seem to be there at that time - either a minute or two after -- or before -- the scheduled time.

What makes this even stranger is that we have another company, VIVA, which deals with the outskirts of the city. Every stop has a ticket machine, and one of those marvelous "the next bus is due in 2 minutes" electronics.

Sadly, I highly doubt the TTC will ever have something as ingenious as that in their system. They have a lot more things to fix (http://www.citytv.com/toronto/citynews/news/local/article/68546--ttc-worker-photographed-sleeping-on-the-job) before they get around to that...