[Pdx-pm] Transit Surfer

[David Pool]

On Fri, 2005-12-09 at 10:45 -0800, Randal L. Schwartz wrote:
> >>>>> "David" == David Pool <dpool at hevanet.com> writes:
> 
> David> Chris Smith, a local Perl developer, got access to the TriMet API and
> David> built a tool for using a web enabled cell phone to get up to the minute
> David> arrival times for buses and the Max. Says he plans to open source the
> David> code base once it's out of Beta.
> 
> David> http://www.news4neighbors.net/article.pl?sid=05/12/09/1633234
> 
> David> Optimized and without graphics, the thing does look better than TriMet's
> David> own effort at this.
> 
> Well, I don't see what you're seeing then.

Check out this link:

http://beta.portlandtransport.com/cgi-bin/pda.pl?
routeNumber=12&routeNumber=112&direction=1&locationID=5077&go=go

That link will tell me in terse text the next bus to leave from 31st and
Sandy heading downtown. It's not so much a trip planner as an efficient
tracker of the Bus' onboard GPS for my bus and bus stop of interest.


> 
> All I see is a route that is computed along tri-met lines, but it
> doesn't say times or even transfers... just a nice travel path.
> 
> So, tri-met's site planner is infinitely better at this point, because
> it's paying attention to times and transfers and tells me a lot more.
> 
> yes, it's better than the ugly "interactive" map that trimet
> has... in fact, I half expected the "map this" links on the trimet
> site to go to google now and was disappointed when I couldn't just
> drag the map with my mouse.

I believe Chris is atleast tangentially involved in the Google/TriMet
partnership. Even though News4neighbors scooped PortlandTransport.com on
the announcement.

David