Quote:
Originally Posted by denconyny
Really? ..... then I'm disappointed. If this is only - a where the bus is supposed to be - then of what use is it? Just to throw this out there.... why would RTD put this up if it's only a where maybe the buses are supposed to be..... or maybe this is a preface to sometime very soon going live? Because looking at it as is now certainly had me thinking that this was live.....
I'll check out the other links.... but to actually have the ability to know in the now where a bus is that one might plan to soon board certainly would be such an improvement in time management in a lot of lives of a lot of folks (and probably a stress reducer as well).....
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TRAVIC uses the
publicly available trip and stop data that transit agencies publish for services like Google Maps (the data model was actually developed by Google and Portland's TriMet to normalize each transit agency's data). They're able to see how many trips are underway each moment and when each bus or train should be arriving at a stop, so they can show them "moving" based on that, not their actual reported position. It's more a visualization of transit availability and trip density than a tool to tell you when to leave work to catch the bus, as any individual bus or train could be several minutes in front of or behind this ideal model.
On a related note, a student group I was involved with tried to get RTD to let us throw a GPS tracker on the Call n Ride shuttles in Golden. They declined, saying that their own real-time GPS service would be available soon. That was a few years ago, so apparently that service is on the same "soon" timeline as the smartcard service.
