Congrats to OneBusAway, winners of the 2010 WTIA Industry Achievement Award for “best use of technology in the government, nonprofit or education sector”. OneBusAway was started by University of Washington students and provides real time access to transit information here in the Seattle area. I know it best through it’s iPhone app, which is by far my most regularly used app (sure I probably use email more, but the iPhone app I use every weekday nearly without exception.) Yeah, yeah I know you fancy European cities will scoff at our backward nature, but I will tell you that the iPhone app is great: it tells you whether your bus is early or late and…best of all I can use it to walk an extra block and catch a bus at a prior stop…thus allowing me some exercise as well as the chance to get a better seat on the bus (What’s up King County Metro bus drivers with your heavy feet? :)) If you’re a Seattlite who uses public transport, I highly recommend OneBusAway (there are also Android and phone apps.)
O brave new quantum world!
“Yeah, yeah I know you fancy European cities will scoff at our backward nature…”
your post prompted me to get the latest app for german rail, which seems a lot better than the previous homemade version. poor guy had to scrape their clunky webpage.
however, i would gladly trade you for urbanspoon!
Looks awesome! Do you know if they’re planning on working with other regions?
I might ride the bus more often if I had this app.
I find subways much easier to figure out than buses, particularly if I have to make one or two transfers.
That sounds like a great app. We could do with one here in Sheffield.
google maps does something similar, right? is the difference that google maps relies on published bus schedules and not real-time knowledge of whether the buses are late?
Yes it updates in real time.