A TriMet Innovation Idea
Imagine a display screen on a bus or MAX car. Imagine that as the bus or train approached transfer locations, that screen would show the estimated times until the next transfers arrive.
The bus and train tracking technology already exists for use by the Transit Tracker system.
Surely I’m not the only one who has a commute that depends on a fairly close connection, and if I knew that I had just missed that connection I might take an alternate route…
Posted in Business/Development, Transportation |
March 3rd, 2008 at 8:55 am
Trimet, are you listening? This would be a brilliant way to add value to your service…
March 4th, 2008 at 11:18 am
I moved here from Southern California (Long Beach) where the buses all have GPS transponders and each stop had a receiver (each in the shape of a bird… it was SoCal, after all), so the bus and the stop both “knew” within 1 minute an accurate schedule.
I have also suggested to them a few ideas:
1) Implementing an SMS schedule update program (i.e. send txt msg to TRIMET (874638) with the stop id number and receive a text back with the next 3 arrival times)
2) A mobile version of their crappy website for easier on-the-go trip assistance
March 4th, 2008 at 11:53 am
Portland Transport has several tools that help in this space (including two options for SMS display of arrival times).
The Transit Surfer (designed for cell phones with web browsers) comes closest to the transfer information problem, although it’s still awkward for gather data from multiple stops (either we have to set up a multi-stop id for you, or you need to string together a URL with multiple stop ids).
See:
http://portlandtransport.com/archives/2007/08/portland_transp_6.html