T taps tech-savvy to keep riders in loop
By Eric Moskowitz, Globe Staff | April 7, 2010
The number 39 bus is the MBTA?s busiest, carrying 14,400 passengers a day between Jamaica Plain and the Back Bay. Its schedule is tacked up at JP Licks, where commuters grab coffee before catching the bus, but anyone who has ridden the 39 knows the posted times are only a suggestion.
Now there is something better: An LED sign mounted above a display case, to the left of the ice cream counter and the right of the life-sized cow. In red letters that scroll across the face, it displays arrival times for the next two buses.
The sign was built not by the MBTA, but by a 42-year-old software engineer and entrepreneur who lives around the corner and wanted a better way to catch the bus. With $350 in materials and an afternoon?s work, Benjamin Resner accomplished what the T has been talking about doing for years.
Resner?s bus tracker is part of a wave of rider-friendly iPhone apps, desktop widgets, websites, and hardware installations that tell people where and when to find the next bus. The applications are the first results of a trial program in which the MBTA, once a careful guardian of its data, is now sharing information freely with local software developers, web entrepreneurs, and at-home tinkerers to see if they can do better than the T itself at finding innovative ways to keep commuters up to date.
The project represents a dramatic shift in philosophy at the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, which a year and a half ago sued a group of MIT undergraduates who uncovered flaws in the CharlieCard system to keep them from presenting their findings at a hacker conference.
?Those days are over,?? said Jeffrey B. Mullan, the state?s secretary of transportation. The MBTA is now partnering with MIT?s Center for Future Civic Media and reaching out to the tech community, offering modest prizes like CharlieCard passes and chances to play with the T?s bus-driver training simulator to reward the best work.
?What the open-data initiative has done is it?s permitted people who are quote-unquote outside of transportation to help us perform our core mission, and it?s huge,?? Mullan added. ?Even just letting people have access to our data proves to people that we?re willing to trust others.??
Encouraged by the first applications developed for the 39 and four other bus lines, MBTA officials say they anticipate a time when riders of all subways, buses, and trains will be able to select from an array of independently produced high- and low-tech applications when making travel plans.
The open-data initiative is being driven by Christopher Dempsey and Joshua Robin, bus-riding Department of Transportation officials in their 20s who met on Deval Patrick?s gubernatorial campaign and who were impressed by the efforts to enlist outsiders in helping commuters use Portland?s TriMet and the Chicago Transit Authority.
?The initiative really started with a question, and that question is, where is the bus??? Robin said.
Dempsey and Robin convinced higher-ups to get on board with a limited trial, insisting that the data could be released in a safe and productive fashion and that developers hungry for the challenge and interested in transit would actually produce applications at no cost to the T.
At first, the MBTA released only schedule and route information, and within weeks, developers had created half a dozen different phone and desktop applications. One of them, Sparkfish Creative?s MassTransit, made a cameo appearance in an iPhone ad last week.
Then the T released real-time predictions about when buses would arrive, based on GPS data and past travel times, for five bus routes. Within an hour, someone had plugged the data into Google Earth. And within a month, Resner had programmed and built his JP Licks sign.
Now there are more than a dozen applications and devices that track buses on the five routes, ranging from a whimsical bus-tracking clock powered by a recycled cellphone to widely available applications for the iPhone. And the transportation agency has created a website, a Twitter feed, and a Google group, and has organized regular networking events to encourage competition and collaboration among potential transit application developers.
By summer, the state plans to release real-time location data for every bus along the T?s 190 routes.
Some of the developers hope to eventually turn a profit, by selling their applications to riders or selling advertising. Others, like Resner, say they are just dabbling to show what can be done.
?It?s gratifying to be able to use a skill, with very little time, that has a big impact and help the community,?? Resner said.
But Resner acknowledges that there is one fringe benefit to his ice cream counter bus-tracker ? he has gotten to know top management at JP Licks.
?I?ve got two small kids,?? he said. ?I?m like a huge hero.??
Eric Moskowitz can be reached at
emoskowitz@globe.com.