In an era when your can find your friends and find your lost iPhone on a map, thanks to GPS technology, you might have wondered why it has taken so long to do the same for various forms of transport, all of which operate in “real time”.
Finally, however, buses and even taxis have caught up, thanks to GPS devices that can feed location information in real time back to end users.
Sydney public bus users have been able to use the 0488 TXT BUS service for some time, allowing anyone with a mobile phone of any type, to simply send the
“bus stop” number to 0488 TXT BUS so a text message reply returns with real-time bus information.
The information always seems to be within a 30 minute window, showing you which bus services are due to arrive in however many minutes.
While that system has been available for some time, the big question for those with a little bit of foresight has simply been “when will this real-time info come to apps?”.
Thankfully, the way for real-time info to make an ‘appy arrival is now, with TripView, TripGo and Arrivo the first three ‘apps off the rank’, as it were, to display this wonderful real-time info.
It’s great news, because it always irked me (and no doubt many others) when TripView or some other app stated when, according to a time table, a bus should arrive – only to belatedly discover the bus had come early, leaving you to wait for the next one, or that it’s late, forcing you to waste time waiting.
The fact that it’s available within apps also saves the trouble of texting bus stop numbers, switching into and out of apps unnecessarily.
Naturally, the NSW Transport Minister Gladys Berejiklian thinks it’s a great system, promising that the service will roll out to across more public and private bus lines in 2013.
There’s even good news for environmentalist types, with some apps providing details on transport options not only by “cost and convenience”, but also by “emissions”.
Current public buses with real-time info include those in Sydney’s CDB, the eastern suburbs, the inner west, southern suburbs, north western suburbs, the northern beaches and lower north shore, with further expansion to come.
Real-time travel info is finally possible for a large chunk of Sydney’s public bus network, ending the not-so-Dr-Who-like mystery of why the existing real-time data hadn’t yet made it to popular transit apps once and for all.
So, unless you don’t have a dumb phone, feature phone or smartphone at all, you’ll now always know exactly when the bus is coming, or if it has been delayed by traffic, an accident or something else, because you’ll know what the real-time info now says about its arrival, thus making public bus transport more reliable, and maybe even putting fun into real-time travel!
Source:
http://www.ezonearticle.com/2012/12/17/real-time-travel-on-sydney-buses-dr-who-not-needed/
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