Bus Left You Waiting in the Cold? * USA - Use Your Cell Phone to Track It Down
WASH,USA -University of Washington News and Information, by Hannah Hickey -10 Feb 2009: -- University of Washington (UW) doctoral students Brian Ferris and Kari Watkins have developed OneBusAway, a free service that enables bus riders to check the arrival status of buses using a cell phone or computer...Watkins says research shows that removing uncertainty significantly reduces peoples' frustration with using public transportation. "When people have to wait, they think that twice as much time is passing," she says. "If I know ahead of time, I can grab that cup of coffee and be back out in time to catch my bus. And that kind of information makes taking public transit so much more livable"...
OneBusAway is based on MyBus, a program created in the mid-1990s by UW professor Daniel Dailey that allows people to enter a bus route and stop number and receive anticipated arrival times. MyBus combines odometer readings from each bus, relayed through dispatch, and route information to estimate a bus' current position. Ferris and Watkins say OneBusAway makes MyBus more user-friendly and accessible to people away from their computers. Ferris recently added a new feature to OneBusAway that tracks canceled buses to prevent people from waiting for buses that will never arrive. (Photos by Kathy Sauber (above) - Brian Ferris, a doctoral student in computer science and engineering, uses his iPhone to check the status of a late bus. Ferris created OneBusAway, a free service that lets bus riders use phones, computers or iPhones to get real-time updates on bus arrivals - (below) This is where the stop number normally appears on the posted schedule) Labels: tracking buses
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