The folks who brought you WalkScore now bring you City-Go-Round which will help you find transit information applications for your city or region (also biking, walking and driving apps) and will further tell you which transit agencies near you provide open data (kudos to TriMet for starting the trend).
20 responses to “Find Your Transit App”
They do have a nice nationwide list of transit providers, even if they don’t have open data. Not comprehensive/exhaustive (many of the really small systems/services aren’t there), but still a rather nice list.
I need to get my TransitMapper app done… (It’s there and it works, but I need to get a description page done, add AJAX (I think) to the interactive version so one can select a different stop and get updated data without having to reload the entire page, make it official and listed on trimet.org,…)
Kudo’s to Fred Hansen for his leadership in solving global warming and transit applications.
Too bad none of it actually helps any riders that are losing services.
But hell, the can find the application for somebody else, that’s something right?
i’m seeing a severe lack of apps or transit organizations helping out OpenStreetMap solve this problem. Why reinvent the wheel when there’s one open source for geospatial data of all sorts?
Paul,
I’m a fan of OpenStreetMap as well, but the openness issue here is about the transit agency providing it’s schedule or real-time arrival (aka “Automatic Vehicle Location” or AVL) data. I don’t see any way a third part can solve that (perhaps short of slapping GPS beacons on buses).
is there a windows desktop gadget for real time arrival for trimet or the streetcar?
There is an iGoogle (custom home page) widget for TriMet’s transit tracker:
http://www.google.com/ig/adde?hl=en&moduleurl=http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/106311461343144133467/trimet-transit-tracker.xml&source=imag
But that doesn’t include Streetcar (although transit tracker on TriMet’s site does – I’ve been trying to get that fixed).
I believe there are several widget for NextBus (google them) that would let you access Streetcar info.
Re: Windows app….
I should hope not. Anybody looking to write a transit app shouldn’t be looking to obsolete operating systems for support.
Re: TriMet/Portland Streetcar data
I’m surprised TriMet has Portland Streetcar data at all. Portland Streetcar is a service of the Portland Bureau of Transportation, not TriMet.
Believe it or not, we actually try to communicate and cooperate. Streetcar has provided TriMet a feed for several years.
However, there is some legal nicety missing such that they don’t feel able to re-publish the Streetcar data in their feeds to 3rd party apps. I’ve been pushing on getting this fixed for a couple of years now.
I should hope not. Anybody looking to write a transit app shouldn’t be looking to obsolete operating systems for support.
nice as if we didnt have enough with the bus vs. rail arguments around here now we have to delve into pc vs. mac :)
Not even. Most of the world runs some kind of Unix these days (Linux being the most popular on the desktop and on cell phones). If you target unix generically, you get Linux and Mac and most phones in one fell swoop. If you want to develop for CP/M’s retarded cousin, you get to go through Microsoft, a prohibitively restrictive and expensive proposition.
If you’re a developer with any sort of brain at all, you’re not targeting Windows.
All right, no more Operating System Wars. If someone wishes to select a target market which includes Windows users, that’s a simple business decision and not evidence of an absence of “any sort of brain at all”.
Given that a) many users of such beasties will be on mobile devices, and b) it’s not hard to write platform-neutral Javascript for this sort of thing for those users who will be using full-scale computers (ie PCs, Macs, or Linux boxes in whatever size) why would anyone target (or avoid) a particular platform for transit apps?
Our tools are pretty much written on the HTML/JavaScript model for the reasons cited.
But note that the request here was for a widget, and unfortunately there is no universal widget system. Most of the desktop widget systems are targeted at some specific environment (e.g., Yahoo, Mac, etc.).
[Moderator: Further operating system war justifications removed. Paul, you’ve stated your point twice already. Stop trying to pick fights where none are warranted. – Bob R.]
a windows desktop gadget for real time arrival
Well, if you can use a Web page as a gadget, there’s at least a couple of apps that would work.
some legal nicety missing such that they don’t feel able to re-publish the Streetcar data
Well, I don’t think this would be the first case. But I see that Transit Board does include streetcar arrivals.
Thanks for lowering the bar instead of hearing out a rational argument, Bob. Really makes for a more intelligent place.
[Moderator: Calling those who do not see the world the way you do “stupid” is not a rational argument. Your comments are inflammatory, not enlightening. You’ve been told before that if you can’t keep the discussion civil, you can go somewhere else. This matter is closed. – Bob R.]
What we, and a number of other developers, have done is pull feeds from both TriMet and Nextbus in order to get a picture of the full system. That’s what Transit Board does.
Well, where are NextBus’s feeds available, if I were to add the streetcar to TransitMapper?