Aug 21, 08



Follow-up to "A Call for Open-Source Public Transit Mapping"


Normally I wouldn't bother to make a new article for this, but a lot of people were interested in the original post, and someone (Justus Stewart) finally sent in a link to a truly impressive transit-mapping application: Bus Monster.

Bus Monster hacks Google Maps to display nearby bus stops, the routes of whatever buses you care to look up, and when you click on a bus-stop bubble it shows you when the next few buses will arrive at that stop. You can even have it set an alarm to warn you a chosen number of minutes before the bus is due to arrive at that stop.

The tool is just a hack by Chris Smoak, but its interface is head and shoulders above anything else I've seen, including the professionally-built proprietary systems. The only problem is that it doesn't do trip-planning yet, which is a bit of a show-stopper. Also, it's custom-built for Seattle's online bus info, it's not universally applicable. But he says he's working on trip-planning data access, and he's going to open-source the code so others can do it in other locations. If all transit agencies used a single open-standard XML for input/output of trip data, writing the code once would make it work everywhere.

(thanks, Justus!)

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Comments

Okay, that's going on my site! As a veteran user of Seattle Metro's bus site, this is very useful.

Posted by: Mr. Farlops on June 30, 2005 11:19 AM

Nice, but should add many features that have been available for some time on mybus.org ... or better yet, if anyone is still maintaining mybus.org, they should perhaps give it a facelift and include Justus' work!!

Posted by: Kaveh on June 30, 2005 2:56 PM

The bus listing at each stop are the right idea - but they aren't listed in the right order - they should be in the order of when they'll arrive, so you can see what your soonest options are.

Posted by: Michael McCracken on June 30, 2005 8:07 PM

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