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ChineseChicago To Provide GPS Tracking Data For All Bus Lines
Image courtesy of PhotoDu.de.
According to Permanent Campaigns, the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) is investing $24 million to expand a pilot program that provides real-time bus tracking data to its customers via web and digital signage at certain bus stops. The program, called the CTA Bus Tracker, has provided real-time date for one bus line (the #20 Madison route) since 2006. The expansion will make real-time data for all 154 CTA bus routes available on the Bus Tracker by spring of next year. Starting next week, 13 bus routes will be added, with the rest coming incrementally.
I loaded up the Bus Tracker to check out the interface and it’s very nice – bold and simple, with no fluff. Metro has implemented a similar interface, for non-real-time bus tracking called NexTrip Beta, and the CTA Bus Tracker, aside from actually being real-time, blows it out of the water in terms of interface design. The CTA interface is still a pop-up, which sucks, but it removes one superfluous element that Metro’s interface has… the need to input your destination stop. The CTA Tracker has 3 inputs: choose your route, the direction of that route, and the bus stop you will be starting at. The CTA Bus Tracker instantly updates with an easy to read list of the routes, bus numbers, and estimated arrival times. The interface is far more responsive than Metro’s NexTrip, which seems to have a unnecessarily long load periods after a selection is made. The CTA Bus Tracker also has a map option, which shows your bus stop on a map and the locations of the buses on your chosen route, updated in real time! It’s really cool to see the buses move along the map toward your location.
I tried the Bus Tracker out on my Helio Ocean, an internet enabled cell phone, and was very pleased with the results. It automatically loaded a mobile friendly text mode, and making selections was intuitive and fast, no annoying drop down menus or lengthy reloads. This would be so incredibly useful here in Los Angeles.
Los Angeles’ bus system is larger, 191 routes versus 154 in Chicago, but to me that’s all the more reason to implement this technology. We know buses can’t keep their schedules, we understand it’s because buses travel on the roads with cars which are inherently unpredictable, we just want the piece of mind of knowing where our bus is in reality, not where it’s supposed to be in fantasy schedule land. Instead of spending $60 million on fare gates which offer nothing to the customer, why doesn’t Metro spend half that to provide a service that would offer a huge service to the largest portion of the Metro riding public… the bus riders.
Discussion
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amen a million times. bravo CTA for pwning the hell out of us! i know chicago transit isn’t perfect, and they have their fiscal pit falls, but if they can do this, there’s absolutely no reason LA can’t. halting this insane 60 mil to be thrown away on unjustifiable fare gates is a start.
It seems like it wouldn’t be too difficult for Metro to implement this since I’m assuming they already have GPS equipped buses (based on the automated stop annunciation and Local Live maps on TransitTV). However, the current real time arrival information on rapidbus.net doesn’t work half the time. That’s because the LA system doesn’t use GPS, but rather the loophole sensors in the road; those big ones that stretch the entire width of the road. When a bus goes over that sensor, it estimates how long until the bus reaches the next stop. Therefore, the information we are getting about when the next bus will be arriving is limited to when a bus goes over the sensor. Now, if the sensor is down or the sign is down, then it’s SOL. But it seems like since Metro and the City have so much already invested into this infrastructure, they would be hard pressed to back out. This is why you can’t see any real time arrival info for the 720 in Beverly Hills because they are not part of the City of LA. The same goes for the 704, where the light synchronization is split between SM East and SM West because BH is sandwiched in the middle.
I’m sure people who have used transit up north have heard of nextbus.com which provides real time arrival info for AC Transit and Muni. It seems like for the 14/714 riders especially (at least of what I have been reading), it would prove invaluable. If the bus was running late, you know you’d have time to stop and get a quick coffee instead of waiting 20 minutes for a bus that should have came 3 minutes ago.
It’d also be nice to see Metro adapt BART and WMATA real time arrival info for the subways. The new flat screen plasmas are hardly necessary when the current red scrolling marquees could have displayed just as easily any real time info.
This is a horrible idea!
Why would you want the public to know where its buses are? This information could be used by terrorists!
What’s next? Open platforms for rail travel?
http://www.rapidbus.net provides a similar interface… but only for rapid buses… still, i think they are on the right track!