Using Public Data to Make Easy "Next Bus" Displays

Monday, October 25, 2010 - 9:00am PDT by Tim Halbur

At the recent RailVolution conference in Portland, OR, Chris Smith of Portland Transport showed off a cheap and simple display device that uses open source data to display transit times in public spaces. His price? $200.

The guts of the display are an offshoot of the Chumby, an open Linux platform. Smith tapped into TriMET's open source data and set up the display to access the web and voila- a public transit times display suitable for bars, restaurants, malls, and anywhere people need to know when the next bus is coming.

Full Story: The World's First "Transit Appliance"

Published on Monday, October 25, 2010 in Steetsblog

Tags:

Open Source, Public Data, Transit Times

Comments

great idea, how good is the data?

# Submitted by daniela_says on 25 October 2010 - 09:25am

I love this idea. How accurate is the data? One thing that drives me crazy about the automated info systems they've installed in some of the NYC subway stations is that often seem to be unable to deal with unexpected changes, and bad data is worse than no data when you're waiting for a train!

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