Just a heads up that this week you’re going to see some posts that are intended to hang around as documentation for our various transit tools. They’ll be written less in a ‘current’ tense and more in an archival kind of way.

For some time TriMet has had an ‘unofficial’ SOAP/XML web services interface to some of their data, including real-time arrival (also known as AVL – automatic vehicle location) data. Portland Transport uses the SOAP interface for our Transit Surfer, Transit Board and SMS interfaces for real time arrivals. They didn’t advertise it, but if you…

A few weeks ago, we unveiled a prototype interface for getting TriMet arrival times via txt message. This is just a quick update. The reply messages have been condensed based on your feedback. The typical message now looks like this: Streetcar to SW Lowell and Bond: 2m,18m,34m; 15 Parkrose TC: 3m,17m For each line at…

If you’re an early adopter, and already have your iPhone (guilty – I got mine at 11pm on the first day – after the lines were gone), an interface to the NextBus arrival time system used by Portland Streetcar has just been released. Check out pdx.munitime.com. I’m jealous, I’d love to have a spiffy iPhone…

I’ve set up an interface to provide TriMet arrival times via text message. Usage of our cell phone web browser interface (the Transit Surfer) has been relatively light, and I’m wondering if web browsing is just too inconvenient on cell phones for this to take off (although I have hope for my iPhone). So would…