Last Week's Real-Time Bus Information Launch and Next Steps

[Josh from MassDOT]

Hi Everyone,

Last week we announced that we would be providing real-time location
and arrival prediction information for all buses and bus stops by the
end of this summer. Beginning last Thursday, we launcheddata for 1,
4, 15, 22, 23, 28, 32, 57, 66, 71, 73, and 77. When combined with
routes 39, 111, 114, 116, and 117 we now provide for real-time
information for one-third of MBTA bus riders. To provide this feed,
we have expanded our partnership with NextBus. Their feed, which was
provided for the trial routes, is the feed that will be used as we
expand to the rest of the system this summer.

If you are looking for the feed you can find it here:
http://www.eot.state.ma.us/developers/realtime/

Our vision is for the MassDOT Developer community to take this data
feed and build the web sites, installations, tools, services, and apps
that get this information directly to riders. As we always say, our
goal is to make finding real-time bus information as easy as finding a
weather report. The more than dozen applications created within two
months using the trial feed gave people a sense of what is possible
with this information and was our motivation in unlocking data on the
rest of the system. However, people are always asking for the best
way to find this information by SMS, on a Blackberry, and through a
simple mobile website – please help us answer those questions. We
need your help and are excited to see the tools you build in the
coming weeks and months!

There are a few outstanding questions here on the Google Group. We
are working on comprehensive responses and hope to have answers to all
questions tomorrow. In addition to answering the questions here on
the Google Group, we are planning a small Developers Meeting next
Monday evening for those who have further questions about the feed and
are interested in what is next for the initiative. Please email me
if you are interested.

Thanks again for being a part of this initiative. The tools,
applications, websites, and installations you have built are a huge
part of making the T easier for our riders to navigate!

Best,
Josh

______________________________
Joshua K. Robin
Massachusetts Department of Transportation
Joshua...@eot.state.ma.us

MassDOT Developers Page: http://www.mass.gov/eot/developers
Twitter: http://twitter.com/MassDOTdev
Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/massdotdevelopers

[Josh from MassDOT]

Terrence,

Thanks for attending the event last week. Sorry it has taken a few
days to respond. We wanted to get back to your questions.

As we said last Thursday, we have partnered with NextBus to provide
the expanded feed. We are doing this through an additional year-long
agreement with NextBus that will allow us to make this information
available as we work towards a long-term solution to opening this
information.

As we have said in the past, our goal is to focus on unlocking the
data through a feed posted to the Developers page. Once we have
opened the data, it is our hope that the Developer community will
build the tools, applications, installations, and websites that will
put this information in the hands of our riders. We are not planning
our own SMS Service, phone service, apps, or other direct-to-rider
applications. Our challenge to you is to build those solutions and
make this information as available as the weather!

As always, we are working to open more real-time information. The
great apps the Developers community have built has been a huge burst
of energy to make this happen, but we can’t offer a specific timeline
on other data. I promise we are working on it – we ride the trains
everyday ourselves so unlocking this information is just as important
to us!

Most highway data come from 3rd parties not connected to MassDOT.
There are a few companies that work in this space including NavTeq,
Inrix, and AirSage. Feel free to have a look at their websites, we
think some of them might have Developer pages.

Lastly, we appreciate feedback on the event. We will certainly make
sure to include time for Q+A and more interaction for future events
and agree that we were lacking that energy. As was mentioned in our
post to the group last night, we will be hosting a small get-together
next Monday evening. Please email me if you are interested.

Thanks again for the feedback and do not hesitate to e-mail with
questions.

Best,
Josh


On Jun 7, 5:52 pm, Josh from MassDOT <joshua.ro...@eot.state.ma.us>
wrote:

> Joshua.Ro...@eot.state.ma.us

[DavidN]

Thanks for the notice - this is excellent news :) I'm redoing my bus
predictor to make use of the new style right now...

David

On Jun 8, 1:25 pm, Josh from MassDOT <joshua.ro...@eot.state.ma.us>

[Sean]

Is the state planning on labeling MBTA bus stations with their #s so
that if third parties do roll out an sms system, riders without
smartphones will know what number to punch in? Also, it seems Nextbus
does have an sms system now, is that just a trial?

thanks for all your hard work-

sean

On Jun 8, 1:25 pm, Josh from MassDOT <joshua.ro...@eot.state.ma.us>