Cool. The event that Mr. Davey refers to, “Where's the Bus 2.0: The Wait Is Over”, is tomorrow, Thursday 6/3, 6pm @ Microsoft's New England R&D center, One Memorial Drive in Cambridge.
It is my pleasure to add to the dialogue on BMG. In particular, I want to follow up on Pablo's weekend post and invite those interested to an exciting event on Thursday. The MBTA is constantly working to improve services for our riders. Safety and customer service are the top transportation priorities of Governor Patrick and MassDOT Secretary Jeff Mullan. I focus on it every day at the T. To boost service coordination, we are currently in the midst of a major upgrade to our scheduling software. This upgrade will allow data collected using GPS technology and other tools to be more seamlessly used to adjust schedules. While we work to do this today, the sheer number of different transfer options makes it a significant challenge. This new technology should help.
This summer, we will also roll out a pilot program to equip officials on six key bus routes with handheld computers to monitor buses in real-time. This program, funded by the federal stimulus American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, will provide customers with better information but also allow operating personnel to make real-time service adjustments.
In addition to these initiatives, the MBTA is working to use technology better while harnessing the minds of the tech community in greater Boston.
In his post, Pablo mentions the MassTransit app, one of more than a dozen apps created as a result of the MassDOT/MBTA Developers Initiative. All of these apps were created at virtually no cost to the T because the at the insistence of Governor Patrick MassDOt and the MBTA decided to unlock our basic route and schedule data- the information we have handed out as paper maps and schedules for 100 years. By opening the data, smart software developers like the team at SparkFish Creative are able to build apps like MassTransit.
Developers and more importantly riders were happy to have trip planning apps but they came back to us with a question, “How do we know when the bus is actually going to arrive?”
For the past few years, the MBTA has installed GPS devices on our buses to improve operations. In our bus operations center, our operators see every single MBTA bus on a screen. Last November, we decided to open MBTA bus location data for five MBTA bus routes to software developers. In less than one hour, the first app was built. In two months, there were more than a dozen apps. For more on what happened, check out the YouTube Video below:
If software developers built more than one dozen apps in two months for five bus routes, what is possible if we open the data for the rest of our buses? This Thursday the MBTA and MassDOT will host an event called “Where's the Bus 2.0: The Wait is Over,” at Microsoft's New England Research and Development center. The event is open to the public and designed for a general audience; we would love to see you there!
This sounds like a thrilling process, but how about getting something useful up and running, like, yesterday? And not something only for smartphones, but for everybody. As in, an electronic sign at every major bus stop reading: “## bus arrives in MM:SS.”
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p>These signs exist as nearby as Canada and make the difference between un-usable and usable bus systems.
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p>I had to stop riding the bus a few years ago after the #20 didn’t come for an hour and made me miss an important meeting. While I was waiting I watched then-GM Bob Prince drive by in his chauffered Caddy.
It’s just not. Let it go. Why won’t it happen? Cost.
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p>You’ve got to wire the stops which aren’t wired. You’ve got to install and maintain the electronics and pay the electric bill. You’ve got to deal with the fact that unlike train stops, the MBTA doesn’t own the bus stops. They can’t install the sign without permission of the city/town. They’ve got to worry about height requirements, narrow spaces, zoning, and about 100 other things.
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p>Given that the vast majority of bus users own mobile phones, the “call this number” approach is really elegant. It’s not great for me (I don’t own a cell phone), but it’s great for most users, and a tiny sliver of the capital or operational cost of electronic signs. It also allows folks to get the information before they go out to wait for the bus, which is a major bonus during bad weather.
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p>un-usable? Funny, I see thousands of folks use the Boston buses every day, despite the lack of electronic signs.
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p>I had to stop driving a care a few years ago after an hour long major traffic backup made me miss an important meeting. While I was waiting I saw 100s of cyclists ride by. So now I never drive a car ever, because that one particular time I got the raw end of bad luck.
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p>I kid of course… but is it really any different than your claim? No form of transportation is reliable 100% of the time. I have no idea what the relative performance is for driving a particular route at a particular time is vs. the bus vs. the train vs. the feet vs. the bicycle, and I’m sure it varies widely.
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p>The MBTA needs to improve quality of service (QoS). They need to make the information more easily available to riders, and they need to make the actual performance of their vehicles better. On this we all agree. Thing is, those improvement require both (a) real money, and (b) real cooperation from local gov’ts and local users and local non-users. The MBTA’s structural shortage of money is well documented; the lack of cooperation not so much. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve seen Boston or MA gov’t vehicles (usually cops) parked in the bus stop while they’re directing traffic… so they make mass transit performance worse in order to minimize the difficulties for automobiles. That kind of stuff has to stop, and it’s cultural, and the fact is that no governor nor mayor in recent history has demanded that his municipal employees work with the MBTA to improve performance, or at the very least not impede it.
I was indulging in hyperbole, but the point is: it’s a really frustrating experience, and it only gets less so if you use it often enough to internalize all its quirks. People use it because they have to. The schedule is often meaningless. It is a system that lets you down more often than trains and cars do.
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p>I rarely drive, but instead use the trains, being lucky enough now to live near a stop. They’re very reliable. Back when I lived on the #20 line, I started walking the mile to the nearest train station rather than wait for a bus with no sense of when it might come.
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p>I take your point about the cost of signs and the ubiquity of phones. But I think it would go a long way to giving people confidence in the system, to have signs at the most heavily used stops. Btw, I hear in your list of all the difficulties of doing so the classic can’t-do mentality of this era in American governance.
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p>This era of American governance also has the smallest tax base of any in 100 years or so. Modern governance is expected to do far more with far fewer resources than ever before. Older generations managed to do so much because they didn’t fund pensions, created a pay-out-now, take-revenue-later model of social security, buried their detrimental externalities because they ‘didn’t know better’, etc.
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p>I’m not arguing that the signs can’t be done. I’m arguing that the MBTA has far better uses for the money because the MBTA is substantially underfunded. I’d love for those signs to be there; but before that I’d love for the MBTA to go ahead and order the extra green line cars made necessary by their required expansion into Somerville. As of now those cars haven’t been ordered because there’s no money and there are no extra green line cars lying around; once the Somerville extension opens up the interarrival times of rush hour trains will go from every 7 minutes to something like every 10 minutes because the same number of trains will be stretched across more track. Think the trains are crowded now? Add another 40% of people arriving at the station before the next one comes along. The digital signs are relatively expensive for the amount of improvement they provide — the MBTA can do more good for their users by spending the money elsewhere.
OK, I concede the argument at issue here, based on the T’s long list of needs. Of course, if we had congestion road pricing, a sane gas tax, and a robust commitment to public transport, we wouldn’t feel this total incapacity to make a world-class system.
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p>And I take exception to the idea that our predecessors were somehow less responsible than us or left us a mess, and that to correct their mistakes we must enter into some kind of austere phase of penance. The infrastructure and security they were willing to provide is the basis of our twentieth-century success. If we had the guts to be forward-looking and confident we could do the same. Social Security helps give us that kind of confidence, and it’s totally arbitrary to insist that it, as opposed to anything else, should be pre-funded. Tweaking its revenue stream from time to time needn’t be a big deal.
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p>It’s insane defense spending and parasitic elements of the financial sector that are the problem, not social insurance or public services. But given the political realities, etc…
but the fact is that, in some ways, our predecessors were less responsible than us and left us in a mess. Look at the unfunded pensions in cities and towns across the Commonwealth. They promised pension benefits to employees for decades and never set aside the money to pay for ’em. Now our generations have to repay for their lack of payment, plus pay for our own so we don’t saddle the next generations with our lack of payment. I’m not opposed to pensions or SS — I’m glad they exist. I just wish that the folks who cashed in on them first had paid in their fair share instead of punting it down the road to us, just as I wish that the folks in the 70s and 80s had put in their fair share of infrastructure improvements so that we didn’t have such a huge backlog now.
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p>It’s true that the insane cost of the wars would make a huge difference, as would a tax scheme which allows us to have the things we want in our society (including LED signs at bus stops). It’s also true that not being saddled with the pension (and SS) costs eschewed by previous generations would help. It’s also true that a more appropriate tax/fee scheme for transportation would make a huge difference.
Solar panels? Wireless internet? What’s that cost? Get corporate sponsors, like we have for the fastpass lanes?
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p>I know there’s lots of routes and stops, but the major routes? Couldn’t they are least hit the top 5-10 routes with something like this? If I can get this information on my iPod why can’t the T put it on a sign in the same spot? Not everyone has an iPod.
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p>I know they’ve got problems, especially money, but sometimes their thinking is bureaucratic; more about “why we can’t” than “how could we?”.
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p>I applaud this Where’s the Bus 2.0, but Bus Stop 2.0 would be nice, too. Hell, Bus 2.0 would also be good – know where we’re going and when we get there.
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p>Couldn’t we “unlock” this data for all of us, instead of just software developers?
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p>Just askin’
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p>Shadows from buildings, vandalism, snow cover? Solar panels are also somewhat expensive, and you’ll also need a DC/AC converter or a step-down, plus batteries.
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p>From what source? You’re trading a capital expense for an operational one… wireless is more expensive monthly.
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p>Given that solar won’t be robust enough, you’ve got to bring in electricity with wires. So long as you’re doing the wires, might as well do the data communications with wires too — the capital cost is much lower since you’re already trenching/conduit-ing anyway.
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p>I don’t know if Brookline is the only town which bans advertising, but since (unlike the train stations) the bus stops are on municipal property and not state property, it’s not clear that advertising is kosher. It would seem to work in Boston though, and that is a substantial portion.
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p>Ultimately, you’ve got a difficult and costly solution. Why not roll out the cheaper, more robust, more widely usable solution of telephone/gadget check-in first and once that works, consider expanding the program to more expensive, less functional add-ons?
You’re obviously deeper into this than the rest of us. Just doesn’t seem like this is that big deal.
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p>How much juice would it take to run a little sign that tells how long til the next bus? It shouldn’t take a rooftop panel to run a little sign. At most it’s two digits. I can buy solar calculators for a few bucks, a solar recharger for the iPod, solar radios.
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p>Same with wired. These are dense urban neighborhoods. I rode T buses for years, every stop was either on top of or under a utility line. The commuter rail stops have electronic signs. And free wifi on the trains.
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p>Not everyone riding these buses has a gizmo with apps. Plus, I might be a tourist or just don’t ride the T that much; so I don’t know about that cool little app – or want to bother getting and learning it. Or I have a language issue.
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p>We’re not asking for news, weather, and sports. Just “how many minutes til the next train?”. Two digits.
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p>But thanks for the answers. And your work on this.
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it’s just that you can help almost as big a set of users (whose who own a mobile phone) and more of the time (whenever they want to use their phone, not just within view of the station) with the telephone component. It doesn’t require an app — just call a local number and type in the “stop number”, which will be displayed at the station on a sign, and for which regular users will add to their auto-dialing numbers. If you don’t know the station number, just go through the prompts (enter bus number [pause] enter nearest cross street name [pause]). An app would improve the interface, but it won’t be required — any telephone will work.
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p>Solar just isn’t reliable enough without a battery — and now you need inverters, housings, etc. Plus, you need power to use wireless signals. It gets so expensive to install and maintain that it is almost certainly cheaper to just hard wire it — both power and comm. I’m not arguing that it shouldn’t be done where it’s particularly easy and useful (bus depots, so to speak), but given that the telephone/cellphone app program is going to be rolled out, it’s not clear how many people would benefit from the LED signs but not from the phone-service. I suspect that that number is pretty dang low, making the marginal value of the signs relatively low too.
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p>I have no idea what percent of bus users own cell phones, though I suspect that it’s extremely high. I also don’t know what percent of riders on any given day ride that route somewhat regularly, though I suspect that it too is quite high. If so, then most use cases will be handle-able with the telephone/app roll-out, without most of the cost or maintenance issues associated with the countdown signs which, for reasons I don’t understand, are so damn appealing to those who use mass transit, myself included.
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p>The flip: once the telephone system is rolled out, nothing prevents a city or town from installing their own countdown sign at a bus stop: they can install the power, and then use the telephone app for the data feed. This way, the MBTA doesn’t pay for it; the city or town does. Furthermore, particularly if used in conjunction with an audio update, it might be eligible for grants for mass transit use, for disabled use, etc… in which case, again, the MBTA will have set up for the success with the telephone update but wouldn’t have to pay for the install or maintenance.
The MBTA already has a pile of very expensive electronic signage already installed all over the system — including at places where bus and train routes join, such as Davis and Harvard Square.
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p>The expensive electronic sign on the busway outside Davis Square dutifully announces that the “next Red Line train from Alewife is now approaching”, a fact reasonably obvious to anyone running for the platform at that moment. This message is, however, an improvement on the signs all over Park Street that remind us not to smoke and — my personal favorite — to visit http://www.mbta.com for schedule and fare information. Similar but lower-tech signs are at virtually every commuter rail stop (with similarly content-free messages).
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p>The signs are already installed. The ability to display messages on them already exists. State and local government has already spent tens of millions of taxpayer dollars, under the guise of “fighting terrorism”, to install them for use during “terrorist emergencies” — so they presumably can be programmed to display something.
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p>It seems to me that it isn’t asking too much to expect these already-installed signs to display GPS-based arrival times for upcoming bus departures (above ground) and train departures (below ground).
I agree completely.
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p>Use the existing installed signs well first, and then everybody will clamor for more. As it is, the T station nearest me (which has the signs) uses them for nothing, but we’ve got constant audio from assorted pseudo-celebrities warning me about mysterious packages. At 5 in the morning. Really loudly.
Ah yes, the joys of living a conveniently close walk from a T station.
just arrived as I post this. I heard it roll in over the sounds of sirens, construction equipment, a nearby leaf blower, and a toddler throwing a fit.