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Attention transit nerds! Are you jealous of other big cities that employ GPS technologies to bring you the time of the next arriving bus on your cell phone or wireless PDA? We might not be that far away.
In collaboration with LADOT, Metro is testing out their own version on RapidBus.Net with a select number of lines including the Orange Line. Here is what we experienced and our recommendations:
1. It let us know when to leave the house
We were taking the bus and red line subway to the LA Phil from Sherman Oaks. With a few minute walk to Ventura Blvd., we hate to be walking and see the Rapid 750 pass us by from a block away. So we go to RapidBus.net on our computer and see how many minutes until the next arrival. "15 minutes?" we say to ourselves, "We'll leave in 7."
2. Checking it from our cell phone didn't work so well.
So the Verizon E815 or whatever this phone is had trouble accessing our exact bus stop info. We landed on the homepage, but couldn't input our bus number, intersection and eastbound directive.
3. As you can see in the picture...
We don't need to use the cell phone, with the LED Display showing when the next bus will arrive. It should be noted that when it says "Bus Arriving," it means the bus is within a block away.
4. Do Like Google, Use SMS.
What we love about using Google through our cell phone is their SMS technology. While out and about sometimes, we get hungry and want to go to that restaurant on Sherman Way. So we just text to 466453 (that spells GOOGLE) the restaurant name and city/state, and we'll get the address and phone number texted back to us. Now what if we could text Metro "750 eastbound woodman ave" and get the arrival time of the next bus in a auto text reply?
5. Why invent your own when you can outsource?
It's all about government contracts, right? Why not NextBus? They do San Francisco and even a bunch of local cats like Glendale, Camarillo, Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks. Just do it and get it done with.
The program tracks the following lines: 714 (Peak Hours Only), 720, 734 (Peak Hours Only), 741, 745, 750, 751, 754, 757 & 901 (aka Orange Line)
Photo taken at Woodman and Ventura along the 750 Rapid Route.
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this has been a dream of mine for sometime now, especially with the lack of keeping schedule that metro busses are known for. its a great technology that i hope takes effect over the next year on not only the rapids but the locals as well. and i agree, outsourcing to a legit and already working/established company to do this is advantageous. especially since, if metro were to do it themselves it would no doubt take much longer to implement and not work (see tap).
It've been waiting for this for a while. It would be nice to add to the rail lines too. It is pointless if it doesn't work on everyone's phones, Fortunately, it works fine on my phone, running Opera Mini.
Keep this in mind.
Metro will not tailor this system to what customers want. Welcome to the world of government contracting.
Here's why:
1. Metro is not allowed to pick an off-the-shelf technology and just buy it. It has to write specifications and solicit bids.
2. Metro then receives a bid, and the winning contractor develops the system and either maintains it or builds it and lets Metro take over the maintenance.
3. The contractor builds the system that is most likely proprietary. If it were to use killer apps, it would have to pay big bucks for licensing the code.
4. The contractor most likely develops a system that cannot be agile enough to be reupdated year after year. It's a system that will be in place for about a decade.
And, speaking as a rider and longtime transit observer, Metro does best when it ignores its riders. Conversely, Metro gets crapped on the most when it listens to its riders.
Example: Metro did a horrible job overseeing subway construction. Anything that Metro could have done wrong, it did. In 1998 two-thirds of Los Angeles County voted to stop local sales taxes from being used for subways. Today, the same people are pressuring local officials to build more subway.
And the obverse: the public pressured elected officials to build a light rail line from downtown to Pasadena. Metro obliged, listening to not only the people who wanted the line built, but bent over backwards to be a good neighbor in the communities the train served. In 2003 we got the Gold Line. The public took a dump on it, and made sure to exaggerate how agonizingly slow the line is. Or, specifically, the 4-5 minutes of their lives they lost passing through Marmion Way. Three years and Three-quarters of a million dollars later, the people do not want to buy the house because they don't like the color of the drapes.