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March 13 2010

I got the chance to meet one of the developers of One Bus Away, a Seattle-based transit web (and now iPhone) application. Kari Watkins is doing her PhD at University of Washington, and hopped up to Vancouver to pay UBC a visit and give a presentation on her academic work as well as OBA. OneBusAway uses real-time information on a bus location combined with a predictive algorithm to tell people when a bus is estimated to arrive at a bus stop. Cool. One of the neat things was she demoed OneBusy Away on a development server using TransLink’s shiny GTFS data (schedule times, not real-time) instead of Seattle’s. OBA’s app is open-sourced, so it’ll be fun to see how well the predictive algorithm works with Vancouver’s traffic patterns. Judging by TransLink’s testing then pulling of the demo on Main Street, the braintrust at TransLink is still working on that part of the equation as well. I’ll be in Seattle stopping over in April, and will be sure to give the app a shot then.  daryn: I’ve been using the onebusaway.org website for quite awhile now. It’s perfect for being able to check the realtime location of buses that, at least on my common routes, are often late, and know whether you’ll make it by a minute or be waiting for 30. They’ve had an iPhone-optimized website, which works great, for quite some time, but their new iPhone native app really takes it to the next level of awesome. it’s a must-have for anyone who lives in seattle and rides the bus even occasionally.

I got the chance to meet one of the developers of One Bus Away, a Seattle-based transit web (and now iPhone) application. Kari Watkins is doing her PhD at University of Washington, and hopped up to Vancouver to pay UBC a visit and give a presentation on her academic work as well as OBA.

OneBusAway uses real-time information on a bus location combined with a predictive algorithm to tell people when a bus is estimated to arrive at a bus stop. Cool.

One of the neat things was she demoed OneBusy Away on a development server using TransLink’s shiny GTFS data (schedule times, not real-time) instead of Seattle’s. OBA’s app is open-sourced, so it’ll be fun to see how well the predictive algorithm works with Vancouver’s traffic patterns. Judging by TransLink’s testing then pulling of the demo on Main Street, the braintrust at TransLink is still working on that part of the equation as well.

I’ll be in Seattle stopping over in April, and will be sure to give the app a shot then. 

daryn:

I’ve been using the onebusaway.org website for quite awhile now. It’s perfect for being able to check the realtime location of buses that, at least on my common routes, are often late, and know whether you’ll make it by a minute or be waiting for 30. They’ve had an iPhone-optimized website, which works great, for quite some time, but their new iPhone native app really takes it to the next level of awesome. it’s a must-have for anyone who lives in seattle and rides the bus even occasionally.

Comments

  1. translinked reblogged this from daryn and added:
    One Bus Away, a Seattle-based transit web (and now iPhone) application. Kari Watkins is doing her PhD
  2. mindymae reblogged this from daryn
  3. whitneymcn reblogged this from daryn and added:
    I’m consumed with jealousy. In NYC, we have yet...MTA that releasing transit data would
  4. daryn posted this