Where's That Bus?

Last week, the state's Department of Transportation announced a pilot program to release real-time location data (from GPS transmitters) for buses on the MBTA's five busiest routes. Within a couple of days, an enterprising programmer by the name of Joe Shaw had written a program that embeds this information in a Google map. Well done, Joe.

Well, imagine that: the T gets half a clue. I first had the idea that this would be useful years ago while standing at a bus stop one cold winter morning, though I didn't share it in this space until a bit over two years ago. Admittedly, at the time I was still thinking of it too narrowly, in the form of a system that would disseminate the information via some sort of readout affixed to bus stop sign poles. Clearly that's a terrible idea relative to a system that puts the information in front of you right before you leave your home or office or, even better, puts it in the palm of your hand while you're standing at the bus stop.

For the moment the service is limited to just the five routes, which were chosen because they are the most heavily used in the system. That makes perfect sense to me, and I can even take advantage of it because one of the routes is the 39, which I sometimes use when heading home from work. And you iPhone users don't even have to download an app, because Joe has made the information available on a simple web page.