STATE OF THE ART: MAGIC BUS INFO
You’re stranded at a stop, slicked with drizzle, and there’s no bus in sight despite what the timetable says. Who you gonna call? Metro reports bus delays and ETAs online, but not in very intuitive form. That gave one bus commuter, Joe Heck, an idea. “When the iPhone became available, I thought, Let’s put a really nice interface on [the Metro information] and put it in my hand.” Last year Heck released the resulting app, SeattleBus. For $4.99 it not only tells bus stop castaways how long they have to wait but lets users store favorite stops and pinpoint the nearest stop via the iPhone’s nifty geolocation.
By the time SeattleBus arrived, a UW grad student named Brian Ferris had channeled his transit tribulations into creating another real-time tracking system. Ferris’s OneBusAway began as a website and expanded from there. He added a phone number “so anyone with a cellphone could punch it in and get real-time arrival information.” (Dial 206-456-0609, listen to the instructions, and key in your stop number; or text the service.) An Explore tool came later, thanks to Kari Watkins, a UW PhD candidate in engineering. Type in anything from “bars” to “doctors,” and the system scans the Yelp database to find those most accessible via transit.
OneBusAway seeks to expand by integrating service alerts (delays due to events, holidays, or poor weather) and getting Metro and Sound Transit to post the system on their websites. “Instead of King County spending money to reinvent the wheel,” Ferris says brightly, “they can just have us help them.”
Published: November 2009
One road-smart reader has already noted a glaring omission from our “smart biking” tips, especially from the gear list in Tip #2. It seemed so obvious we didn’t bother mentioning it. As Tom Vanderbilt notes in ‘Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do,’ it even makes actuarial sense to wear a helmet in a car (if you can stand the funny looks). But at least a motorists have airbag, seatbelt, and the car itself between their skulls and the pavement.
I love all the insider tips in this package, and thought the “Great Race” was especially enlightening. Being a bus commuter (and fair-weather bike commuter), I do have one pet peeve: If you go to a movie, coffeehouse, grocery store or concert, you would not even consider cutting in line in front of those patrons who were there first. So why is it that bus riders seem to think it’s perfectly fine to reach the bus stop right as the bus is pulling up and jump on right in front of those who have been waiting for 15 or 20 minutes? It’s too bad there’s not a “take a number” system that rewards those who have been waiting in the cold.
Look way ahead, to the next stoplight and beyond, and ease up accordingly. Whether to employ the controversial “pulse and glide”—coasting with engine off, minus power steering and braking—depends on skill, conditions, and car, suggests Kinney. It works better with manual than automatic transmissions, which don’t lubricate with the engine off.