Overheard In Providence

Yesterday I discovered (and subsequently announced) that Google Transit had finally come to Rhode Island. For those not familiar, Google Transit allows any public transportation system to integrate their route information with the “get directions” feature on google maps. Brilliantly, the service is completely free, so all a city needs to do to take advantage is to supply Google with properly formatted route data that they, no doubt, already have. Naturally enough, this simple process takes most public bus/subway systems years to implement.

Expanding existing public transportation infrastructure (particularly trains and subways) is often very expensive. Thanks to global warming and rising gas prices, these expenditures are increasingly worth while, but you can get even more bang for you buck when you simultaneously consider how relatively cheap technology can make existing public transportation work much better. Google Transit is just one example.

My favorite example is using GPS to track the locations of buses. This allows travelers to check bus/train locations, as well as expected arrival times, on the web or their phone. It also would allow transit systems to display the expected weight times at stops. Taking a bus or subway late at night, or in bad weather, is a lot more pleasant when you can time your departure so you don’t have to wait at a stop for 15 minutes.

Earlier this semester, some grad students and I boldly attempted to make this GPS-enabled future a reality. We submitted a proposal, as part of Brown’s initiative to curb carbon emissions, to get money to put GPS-enabled cellphones on select Providence buses. We would have used the GPS data, in conjunction with software my friends had already written, to display bus locations on the web and/or smart phones. We also would have allowed students to use text-messaging to find out what bus they should take to get somewhere, and when they should leave to catch said bus. In fact, we even pointed out that our highly-location specific services would be perfect for generating ad revenue to offset the cost of the GPS. Sadly Brown rejected our proposal, saying that our idea was too “business-like” (which I took to mean, “too well thought out and practical”).

In my home town of NYC, I’ve heard plenty of people complain about the high cost of expanding the subway system. I’ve also heard plenty of people complain that taking buses in outer boroughs sucks. I’ve never, however, heard anyone suggest, that NYC make the bus system better by 1) allowing people to know where buses are or 2) allowing buses to know where trains are, so they can time their arrivals and departures better. At the very least, why not put train information online? Does the MTA honestly not know where it’s trains are at any given time? Isn’t this information already on a computer somewhere?

Once the MTA put train location data online, websites such as hopstop would leap at the opportunity to integrate this data with their existing services. Even if they currently don’t know where their trains are, cell phone service is coming to subway platforms, so service providers will soon be able to use cell phone signals to provide this data. In short, what the MTA really needs is a computer science consultant.