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So, many cities have bus systems and those bus systems now-a-days are usually GPS equipped for several reasons (notably that a central office can monitor the sy
by mdasen 18y ago
So, many cities have bus systems and those bus systems now-a-days are usually GPS equipped for several reasons (notably that a central office can monitor the system and that the busses can announce ADA-compliant stop messages based on location without the driver being involved).
I'd love to have something on my phone that would tell me where the next bus was on a cool Google Map (or other) and an estimated time to arrival (which could be calculated by Google Maps). Of course, you'd have to get your transit authority to give you access to their GPS results.
But this would probably be one of the most helpful things a transit authority could do. The problem most people have with public transit is that it can be inconvenient, but often it is convenient if you have better/more complete knowledge of it. For example, when I get up in the morning, I have no idea whether a bus went by a minute ago and it'll be another 20+ minutes waiting or whether a bus is 2 minutes away.
This could also help trip planning. Often in a mass transit system, there are multiple routes to get anywhere. The trip planners we have today are primitive in that they often don't take current information into account (such as speed at various times of day, location of the next bus/trolly/subway train in proximity, etc.). Using GPS information would greatly change that.
- ggruschow 18y agohttp://www.ctabustracker.com http://www.ctabustracker.com
- carlosrr 18y agohttp://onebusaway.org http://onebusaway.org
- jjs 18y agoIf you trust your local transit authority's posted timetables, then you could gather GPS coordinates for bus stops and write an app that correlates the two with your current location and time.
- dirtyaura 18y agoA live public transport map for Helsinki, Finland: http://transport.wspgroup.fi/hklkartta/ http://transport.wspgroup.fi/hklkartta/ It's a trial, there are most (all?) trams and a few buses.
- bemmu 18y agoI thought that map is just interpolating from the schedules, not from GPS? Not that it makes much difference, the schedules in Finland being very accurate for buses afaik. In Tampere on major stops we have information about when the next bus is coming in, some based on GPS and some on schedules, this distinction is indicated on the board.
- eru 18y agoThis indication on the boards is common in most bigger German cities for busses, trams and so on. E.g. in Frankfurt you have it on any tram stop.
- river_styx 18y agohttp://www.routesy.com/ http://www.routesy.com/
- run4yourlives 18y agohttp://www.translink.bc.ca/About_TransLink/News_Releases/news11250801.asp http://www.translink.bc.ca/About_TransLink/News_Releases/new...
- tim_church 18y agoSan Francisco uses http://www.nextbus.com/ http://www.nextbus.com/ I love this service. Very useful.