Re:Post a possibly good app idea that you have no intention ...
by tim_church on Friday January 09, 2009 @01:34PM
(#426934)
San Francisco uses http://www.nextbus.com/
I love this service. Very useful.
Re:Post a possibly good app idea that you have no intention ...
by dirtyaura on Friday January 09, 2009 @11:53AM
(#426775)
A live public transport map for Helsinki, Finland:
http://transport.wspgroup.fi/hklkartta/
It's a trial, there are most (all?) trams and a few buses.
Re:Post a possibly good app idea that you have no intention ...
by bemmu on Saturday January 10, 2009 @01:23AM
(#427724)
I thought that map is just interpolating from the schedules, not from GPS? Not that it makes much difference, the schedules in Finland being very accurate for buses afaik.
In Tampere on major stops we have information about when the next bus is coming in, some based on GPS and some on schedules, this distinction is indicated on the board.
Re:Post a possibly good app idea that you have no intention ...
by eru on Saturday January 10, 2009 @07:00AM
(#427893)
This indication on the boards is common in most bigger German cities for busses, trams and so on. E.g. in Frankfurt you have it on any tram stop.
Re:Post a possibly good app idea that you have no intention ...
by river_styx on Friday January 09, 2009 @12:18PM
(#426803)
Re:Post a possibly good app idea that you have no intention ...
by jjs on Friday January 09, 2009 @11:41AM
(#426758)
If you trust your local transit authority's posted timetables, then you could gather GPS coordinates for bus stops and write an app that correlates the two with your current location and time.
Re:Post a possibly good app idea that you have no intention ...
by mcxx on Friday January 09, 2009 @01:15PM
(#426897)
That's the thing - unless you're in Japan, you can't rely on timetables. Otherwise this idea wouldn't make much sense (it would still be cool to amaze your friends with it while waiting for the bus though ;)).
Re:Post a possibly good app idea that you have no intention ...
by eru on Saturday January 10, 2009 @07:01AM
(#427894)
Japan ... and Switzerland!
Re:Post a possibly good app idea that you have no intention ...
by run4yourlives on Friday January 09, 2009 @12:46PM
(#426852)
I'd love to have something on my phone that would tell me where the next bus was on a cool Google Map (or other) and an estimated time to arrival (which could be calculated by Google Maps). Of course, you'd have to get your transit authority to give you access to their GPS results.
But this would probably be one of the most helpful things a transit authority could do. The problem most people have with public transit is that it can be inconvenient, but often it is convenient if you have better/more complete knowledge of it. For example, when I get up in the morning, I have no idea whether a bus went by a minute ago and it'll be another 20+ minutes waiting or whether a bus is 2 minutes away.
This could also help trip planning. Often in a mass transit system, there are multiple routes to get anywhere. The trip planners we have today are primitive in that they often don't take current information into account (such as speed at various times of day, location of the next bus/trolly/subway train in proximity, etc.). Using GPS information would greatly change that.