Software in Public Transport
Danny O’Brien, in Software in the Public Transport Interest, discusses online journey planners, GPS and the following service :
Now add into the mix services like NextBus, which monitors and shares info on the realtime position of all the buses in San Francisco. Wrap it all into some portable device (or wireless service), that lets me provide an street address, and plots a route and ETA on the fly.
NextBus shows for each stop a list of future bus arrivals (e.g. next arrival in 2 minutes / 5 minutes). This would be a great addition to my thoughts on future online travel.
Whilst at the bus stop, you can get electronic boards with this sort of information on it, but they are quickly vandalised and probably quite expensive. Better to have a wireless node at the bus stop (hidden discretely)? Or you could sit in a nearby cafe with a coffee instead of waiting in the cold at the bus stop (as I did today. Brrr.)
December 13th, 2002 at 0:09
Yup: or stay in your nice warm house until you absolutely *need* to get to the bus stop. A utility that could check buses and knew how long you usually take to get to the bus stop could do this for you.