Bus riders in London are for a treat as Transport for London announced yesterday that its real-time bus tracking system is now available “anytime and anywhere.” With over 8000 buses running via 700 routes and making 19,500 stops in the U.K. Capital, the system is one of the most complex in the world, and the new system allows bus riders to check the locations of all buses within 30 minutes of a select stop, street or post code. The information is available via the web, mobile browsers and text message.
TfL officials also announced they will be replacing 2000 digital signs and adding 500 more in an effort to better inform riders at popular stations throughout the city. Later this year, the agency will release datasets so that mobile developers can release bus tracking apps. “Over six million bus journeys are made every day in London and this fantastic application of bus data will now enable people, wherever they are, whatever they are doing, to have at their fingertips the power to know exactly when their bus will reach any one of the Capital’s 19,500 bus stops they want to use, at any time of day or night,” Kulveer Ranger, Director of Digital London, said. “This technological step forward will revolutionise the way people use London’s buses and will banish the need for them to ever wait at a bus stop again.”
New York, meanwhile, is working its way toward a similar system. Transit teams are developing a bus-tracking platform for Staten Island that will be modeled after the B63 pilot. If all goes according to plan, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx will see a rollout over the next few years as the technology grows and funds are released. Our system won’t come with MTA-installed screens; rather, that’s a decision local merchants can make using the live streaming data. Still, it’s a worthwhile endeavor, and one, as London will show, that can truly change the way people view and use the bus system.
8 comments
Any idea how much London’s system cost?
Don’t know. That’s a good question.
You did mean to say the rollout over the next few decades? (the articles states years)
Chicago has had this for a few years as well. I visited there about a month ago and was astonished at how good their system is now. They’re even starting to install screens in bus stops.
Really can’t wait for this to go live on Staten Island where buses can be pretty infrequent and express buses, well…there the schedule is often a mere suggetion. That’s especially true on weekends when they have a habit of being incredibly early!
Is there going to be some kind of API to access the live bus data stream so that “local merchants” can take advantage of it? Or something else entirely?
Yes. I believe it exists now along the B63 route in Brooklyn. The idea is that someone could set up their own screen to create a homemade countdown clock showing how far away the next bus is. The API will be open.
[…] Londoners can now track their city’s buses, New York City isn’t too far behind. According to MTA documents released this week, if all […]