Last Tuesday, in a article titled “Portland, out of order“, the Trib took a swipe at the Streetcar Nextbus system:
Maybe the ticker signs at the streetcar stops with their wildly innaccurate arrival times.
My experience is that Nextbus is pretty accurate (I regularly check it from my cell phone web browser while getting around town).
So I’d love to have some actual data to clear its name. Or alternatively, have some data to show what the problems are, so we can fix them.
Our transit tools poll the Nextbus web site, so getting a history of arrival predictions is straightforward.
Could we compare this with actual arrivals to see how well the system does. Here’s what I think we’d need:
- Site with Wi-Fi access and visibility of a regularly used Streetcar stop
- A webcam
- Some kind of image processing algorithm that could look at a captured image, say every thirty seconds, and decide if there was a Streetcar in the frame or not.
Does our community have these ingredients? Can we bring them together for a little project?
14 responses to “A Geeky Community Project?”
Sounds like a great idea, Chris.
I don’t have the equipment or location necessary, but I hope you are able to find someone who does.
Your comment about checking from your cell phone reminded me… I have not been using the transit tracker via my cell phone anymore because we decided to trim up our budget a bit and discontinue the $15/month that Verizon wanted for unlimited mobile internet. We DO however, still have text messaging for a much lower price.
Here’s the question: Have you thought of, or is there a system already available, that allows me to text message my stop ID to transit tracker and have it text me back the next few arriving buses, trains, or streetcars? It would seem to me that this would be very useful… and with the popularity of text messaging these days, I would think it would reach more people than the current internet version of transit tracker.
Is this already available? …if not, do you think it could be made available? Right now I end up calling 238-RIDE all the time to get my next arrivals, because I don’t have the mobile web on my phone anymore.
looking forward to seeing your study data…
-Scott
npGREENWAY.org
Scott, I’ve definitely thought about a text message interface, but it’s complex as you need to either work with all the various carriers or go through a service that already has multi-carrier interfaces. My understanding is that there are $$$ involved.
I thought that the Trib’s comment was out of line. I’ve never had that experience of arrival times being “wildly inaccurate.” Maybe THEY should be providing some data to back up their point?
The agency responsible for public transport fares and inter-company coordination in Stuttgart–The Transport and Tariff Association of Stuttgart (VVS)–offers similar information by SMS. Here’s a quick-and-dirty translation the page describing it (translated from http://www.vvs.de/fahrp_mobil_sms.php):
“Timetable Information by SMS
There are three separate inquiry options at your disposal:
Departure Board:
After entering Location,Station*Line*Date*Time, you will receive the next ten departure possibilities at the chosen station for this line at the given time.
Detailed Assistance:
After entering d*Origin Location,Origin Station*Destination Location,Destination Station*Date*Time or …*Arrival time, you will receive information for the given: origin and destination, date, depature or arrival time, transport mode, line and direction.
Connections Overview
After entering a*Origin Location,Origin Station*Destination Location,Destination Station*Date*Time or …*Arrival Time, you will receive information for the given: origin and destination, date, departure or (as the case may be) arrival time.
A few important points:
* ” * ” separates the various fields.
* Origin and destination can be location and station, location and street/house number or an SMS code for the station as found on station schedule boards and in our station directory.
* Date, time or line can be left out.
Please send your inquiry to the following SMS Service Number: 0160 98942911.
You will then receive the desired information in several parts, numbered by (1), (2), and so on.
The SMS assistance of the VVS is provided free-of-charge, as the VVS covers the costs of sending the Answer SMS. For your inquiry you pay only the standard charge for sending an SMS from your mobile phone provider’s network to a T-Mobile recipient.”
So there you have it. The only difference between this system and the one Scott proposes is–as I understand it–that the latter would provide real-time information. But I guess my point is that in principle, I think the technology is readily-available.
I’ve complained about the inaccurate Streetcar arriveal times before, as well as broken/decommissioned MAX arrival boards at certain locations.
If the point of the project is to determine how accurate (or inaccurate) the times are, I think it can be done more simply by having volunteers simply check various stations. 10 or 15 readings per stop ought to be way more than enough to show a trend one way or the other…
Chris: It’s not ideal, but most carriers have a simple text->email gateway you can use. You type “bus@portlandtransport.com 10111” and send it to a magic number (the number for the email gateway) and it turns it into an email to bus@portlandtransport.com with a body of 10111.
Then you can just reply to the email with the upcoming arrival times.
Again, it’s not the best system, and you’d have to track down and publish all the email gateway numbers for each carrier, but it would work…
Chris: It’s not ideal, but most carriers have a simple text->email gateway you can use. You type “bus@portlandtransport.com 10111” and send it to a magic number (the number for the email gateway) and it turns it into an email to bus@portlandtransport.com with a body of 10111.
Then you can just reply to the email with the upcoming arrival times.
Again, it’s not the best system, and you’d have to track down and publish all the email gateway numbers for each carrier, but it would work…
Michael is correct…
i.e. Verizon = 5035555555@vtext.com
AT&T = 5035555555@cingularme.com
Anybody know the other provider’s e-mail gateways?
I don’t think data is going to stop the Tribune’s cheap shots at transportation options like Streetcar, Tram, etc. Steve Clark, the publisher, wants more money for roads, and this perspective is evident in much that comes from reporters as well.
I have never been disappointed by Streetcar information for next arrival. Once you have the new cars up and running don’t headways approach 12 minutes? Shame on the Trib.
Not sure how a clackamas county based publication would have any reliable knowlege of a Portland streetcar system. Using it often myself, I’ve found the time posted to be very accurate. It would be nice to see some statistics in the public realm to counter the Tribunes bias.
I definitely think that an easy start to an SMS gateway would be a simple e-mail gateway. I know that my cell phone supports sending a text message to an e-mail address (and receiving a response from that address as well).
I’ve actually thought about a simple web script that just queries the tri-met website whenever it gets an e-mail. I don’t think it would be very hard to create at all.
Contact me via my blog if you’re interested in further details!
-Jake
In a GIS class I took at PSU a few years ago (from an academic in the Center for Transportation Studies) we had a presenter from Trimet, who was involved with the data processing of the tons of data they gather every day, as well as the Trip Planner. I posed this same question and he thought it was a good idea but I never heard back on it. Yesterday I was looking at Google’s Transit beta (which curiously started with the Trimet system first) and also I note that you can SMS to 46645 (GOOGL) and get lots of interesting info, like address lookups. Maybe if Trimet can’t do it, Google can, as they already have by vastly improving upon the Transit Tracker (which is like four year old technology).
We have had systematic problems with the system in the past (e.g., vehicles that ‘fall off’ the system).
I think it’s useful to have a verification process that has some rigor. But only if we can find all the technology to make it low labor :-)
I don’t live or work in the downtown area so rarely use the Streetcar (although I love it); however, the posted arrival times have always proven accurate in my experience. Tri-Met, on the other hand, does have some issues with MAX arrival times as well as some bus arrival times. I know the times are supposed to be based upon real location data but somehow they often seem pulled from the online schedule instead.