Jun
02
Dispatches from Philly: SEPTA bus tracking goes live
ByWhile folks within the MTA are working off of the B63 pilot to deliver real-time bus tracking to Staten Island (and eventually, the entire city), Philadelphia has, after ten years of work, finally flipped the switch on its on GPS-based real-time bus tracker. The project — called TransitView — follows 116 bus routes, 3 trackless trolley and 8 trolley lines, and the data is updated every three minutes throughout the day. The service also includes SMS notifications for bus arrivals. For more information, check out Technically Philly and the TransitView website. It’s certainly fun to poke around on the live map as well.
Ideally by the end of this year, Staten Islanders will enjoy this feature, and the rest of the city’s buses will follow suit as well. It should help revolutionize bus travel within the city too. As buses become less reliable and more prone to delays, ridership has dropped over the past two years. If riders know when the bus is coming, how far away it is and how long their rides should take, they can better plan their bus trips. It’s all about customer convenience in an age of technology.
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As an aside, I was at a bar on 34th and 2nd Avenue last night. I used my droid (at onthego.mta.info) and was able to get to the bus stop perfectly as the M16 pulled up using the bustimes real time schedule, then on the bus I checked the same site for the F train schedule, realized I would be cutting it close, made it down to escalator to find the F pulling in. This was all at 12:30am and was a GREAT help.
…too bad the F proceeded to go “express” on the local tracks in Queens after that (probably behind an E running local… sigh… )
The SEPTA bus tracking map is definitely a very cool tool. I wonder if it works on mobile devices as well…?
The SEPTA bus tracking map also shows the location of every stop that the buses make. I am curious if MTA has maps that show the NYC Bus stops — I have never seen anything that actually shows (or even lists) the location of every bus stop on a particular route.
The Bus New York City app does that really well if you have an iPhone or iPad.