30.7.10

A Case for Open Data in Transit

I've always said that the only percieved "Up" cars have over other ways of getting around is convenience - other than their "convenience" they're really nothing but smelly, noisy, and extremely dangerous metal boxes that rip around much faster than anything really ought to. However, the most frequent reason I've heard from people who don't take transit instead is that it's "too annoying to use" - ie. scheduling woes, wait times, etc etc. (another common reason is "I just bike everywhere" - this is an okay reason). Wouldn't it be nice if there was some way to follow exactly what the buses are doing? Wouldn't it be awesome if someone made a phone ap or something to keep live bus tracking and scheduling?

Oh wait.



Personally, I already find transit fairly easy to use, and when I happen to miss a bus or just don't really know, I don't really care anyway. However, as fantastic as it would be, I don't think it's really feasible for everyone to be as mellow and peaceful as I am. Thus, having transit schedules opened up like in the video would be a huge persuasion for people to switch to bussing and trains. This sort of open-sourcing transit data is also totally doable everywhere - none of this "well, it works in Europe, but it wouldn't work here" crap (as well as "well, it works in New York, but it wouldn't work here" - if you have a transit system, you can do this).

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