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Real-time bus location data to be available by end of summer across entire MBTA system
By adamg on Wed, 03/24/2010 - 7:42pm
A pilot project to let private developers hook into real-time data from just five bus lines will be expanded to every route in the MBTA system, new General Manager Richard Davey said at a software developer's conference this evening, Samantha Hammar tweets.
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Glad to hear this, but how are they doing it?
At the MIT meeting where the MBTA first introduced the pilot project, they said that the pilot system wouldn't scale well to the entire bus system.
Good question
I wasn't at the meeting, but hopefully I'll be talking to their lead developer in the morning, so I'll ask him (and, who knows, maybe the Globe was there and will have gotten the answer).
From the initial developer's conference, I seem to recall (and correct me if I'm wrong), while scalability was something of an issue, it was more of an issue with the contracts they have with vendors for different parts of the system.
Technically, this is still a pilot project
Just got off the phone with MassDOT developer Josh Robin, who's overseeing the project.
It's technically a continuation of the current pilot, only, obviously, to every bus in the system. But the data will be different: Now, developers can get both location and "predictive" data (i.e., a time estimate on when the bus will get to a particular stop); the new feed will only have location info.
Robin said that was the fastest way to expand the project. He also said he has no doubt the genius developers in the Boston area will quickly figure out ways to provide some level of prediction ability for their apps: For example, you could tell a rider his bus is four stops away from him. "It's really amazed us what people have done" with the current five-route data, he said.
MassDOTDevelopers Google Group - If you want to play along at home.
The predictive data comes
The predictive data comes from a system run by the NextBus company, and they charge transit agencies per route for generating that data. Running the numbers on all of the T's bus lines probably isn't difficult, but someone would have to find a lot of spare cash in the budget.
I'm curious to see when developers start using this raw data to make their own predictions... and how long they last before NextBus sues them.
will it only work sometimes?
So many other places do this that of course it can be done here too. But will the MBTA keep it working? I ride buses daily and most of them have something broken, the stop bell, the announcements tape, the stops display, not to mention just generally lousy equipment. I expect that maintenance will fail on these systems and little will be done to keep them working consistently. Another area of failure are the machines where you purchase passes. I have given up trying to use credit/debit cards in them because I usually have to try 3 or 4 machines before one finally works with my perfectly functional cards. In NYC I have never had a problem using a credit card with their machines.
This is stellar news. I'm
This is stellar news. I'm sure a lot of iphone and android apps will pop up to make this info easily available. I think it will make bus transit much more bearable by taking out the guesswork.