I’m addicted to one bus away – I check it via my iPhone and have bookmarks for all the stops on my route. However I’ve noticed that sometimes it’s not terribly accurate. Apparently, the reason is that metro transit buses don’t have GPS onboard so they can’t report their coordinates in real time. Instead, there are checkpoints that report the buses’ location. Which i imagine makes the data much less precise, especially in traffic. Still, these types of websites are wonderful tools in the smartphone age, and I’m digging the google maps integration.

From my perspective, 2 things would be sweet:

1. Instead of instaling the ORCA system – a pre-paid, proprietary wireless device for paying bus fares that’s behind schedule -  install card readers that work with visa/mastercard. virtually everyone has debit/credit cards, so there would be no more fishing for change, an easier system for transfers and more ridership
2. Add GPS units to buses so they can report their location. It’d be a great resource for sites like one bus away, that rely on bus location information, and for riders to know how far away a bus is, but I suspect the data would also be very useful for traffic modeling/statistics in the Seattle metro area.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 15th, 2009 at 8:13 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.