The potential for GPS at MetroChristof mentioned to me recently that Metro is planning on adding GPS units to all the buses, so they know where they are in real-time. It got me thinking about potential services they might offer with that information. Maybe display them in real-time on a web site map. But here's what I think would be most useful to everyday riders:
- Give every stop in the city a unique number
- Let people send a text message to Metro from their cell phone with that number
- Metro's systems would automatically send a reply text message giving the next few bus route-numbers arriving at that stop and their estimated time of arrival
It could even be helpful with transfers between lines, because you can find out if you have time to walk across the street to Starbucks or pop into a convenience store before your transfer bus arrives.
One tricky part would be software that would learn traffic conditions over time to make good estimates. Routes may average different speeds at different times of the day. It would also need to learn in real-time: if the last bus down a stretch took 15 minutes, that's probably a better indicator than a historical average that predicts 5 minutes.
Another nice feature would be to set notification text messages to be sent when a specific bus number is a certain number of minutes from a specific stop. That would be complicated to input from a cell phone, but wouldn't be much trouble on the web. If you know it takes you five minutes to get from your office to your stop, at the end of the work day you could fill out a web page asking for a text msg alert when your bus is five minutes out. People could even have personal web site accounts to store their regularly used alerts or set recurring ones.
It's relatively simple and inexpensive services like this that could go a long way towards attracting more discretionary riders to transit.