
Transit starts crowd-sourcing real-time transit times as official feed breaks - ant6n
https://medium.com/transit-app/san-franciscos-real-time-transit-data-just-went-offline-so-we-re-going-live-9ebe78f89ea1
======
Animats
NextBus is an old system that uses 2G cellular links. It doesn't need much
data, so that's fine. Now 2G service is being discontinued by AT&T in SF, and
Muni has to switch. Or switch to T-Mobile, which is offering 2G service for
another year.

This was an early "Internet of Things" project. I met the inventor once at the
Hacker Conference. This is a general problem with "Internet of Things"
products - you're dependent on infrastructure which might go away.

~~~
Johnny555
There's no excuse for this happening -- AT&T announced the end of life of 2G
four years ago in 2012. Now Muni claims that the shutdown took them by
surprise and they are scrambling to replace all of the old 2G equipment

[https://www.sfmta.com/about-sfmta/blog/why-muni-arrival-
time...](https://www.sfmta.com/about-sfmta/blog/why-muni-arrival-times-are-
off-week-and-how-we%E2%80%99re-working-fix-them)

 _Simply put, the deactivation work that affects our vehicles started sooner
than expected and outpaced our ongoing upgrade of all Muni vehicles to a new
communications and monitoring system._

[http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2012-08-03/at...](http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2012-08-03/att-2g-network/56758432/1)

 _AT &T Friday [announced] that the shutdown of its second-generation, or
"2G," wireless network will be complete by the end of 2016_

At the time, I was managing some devices that used 2G to send telemetry -- our
AT&T sales rep called us to warn us about the shutdown.

~~~
noobermin
Given SF is more and more the center of the US, how is it that your public
transport still falls victim to such neglect? I understand the lack of
appreciation for most cities in the US (like mine) since we don't really
prioritize, but SF should have its shit together given how dense of a city it
has become.

~~~
mulmen
SF is not the center of the US. It's just a city in California.

~~~
milesskorpen
There are two serious global cities in the US — NYC and SF. I don't think it
is unreasonable to suggest that the center of power/influence/whatever in the
US is shifting to these cities over middle America.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _There are two serious global cities in the US — NYC and SF_

After New York each of Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Houston and D.C.'s
metropolitan areas are more economically larger than San Francisco's [1]. SF
is also relatively negligible as a global financial centre.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._metropolitan_ar...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._metropolitan_areas_by_GDP)

~~~
milesskorpen
MSAs aren't great definitions of geographical areas — San Jose is part of the
Bay Area. If you include San Jose in SF, then SF is the clear #3 in total —
and per capita would be a step function ahead of any other American city apart
from NY.

Even beyond this, I don't think GDP is a good definition of "global city" — I
don't think a city with massive commodity outflows could fit into the
category, for instance.

~~~
pvg
If you include San Jose in SF, you're not really talking about SF. I've lived
in SF on and off for many years and am very fond of the place. The notion it's
a 'global city' in the same category as NYC or LA seems like quite a stretch.

------
JCzynski
>Today we’re excited and proud to be launching in San Francisco. Not that we
planned it or anything. Literally we just decided an hour ago to do this
because somebody asked us to go live and we said “cool okay.”

Startup culture at its finest right here.

~~~
arielm
That statement actually makes me trust them less... I'm not saying they
shouldn't move quickly on such opportunity, but don't make it so obvious.

I hope it works flawlessly.

~~~
samvermette
Only reason we were able to deploy this quickly is because of the 2 pilots
we've been successfully running for the past 3 weeks.

~~~
arielm
I don't for a second doubt the ability. I'm a big believer in moving fast,
especially when there's such a bit opportunity for engagement and PR.

It's just the wording which I found a bit "loose". But I'm a stickler for that
sort of stuff ;)

------
Terretta
I love the competition between Transit and CityMapper. In cities with
coverage, they're both so good it's stressful trying to choose!

We are spoiled by both in NYC and surrounding counties, in Paris Transit is
crushing it with Velib integration, while in Copenhagen CityMapper's local
know how is amazing.

~~~
tfigment
Is this the same company? They list only supporting 2 Canadian cities
(Victoria, Montreal) in the top link.

~~~
samvermette
Those 2 cities is where we've been piloting crowdsourcing. The app itself
works in 125 metro areas.

------
swang
One of my lines I can ride into work is the N-Judah line. This line is the
busiest MUNI line. It is faster to get to my work because it goes underground
and the MUNI buses I have to ride go slower, especially when there are a lot
of pickups.

It is the most frustrating experience to walk to the N line because it is such
a huge gamble. It use to get so crowded that you had to shove in there like
you were on a line going into Tokyo. Just wall-to-wall people. They alleviated
some of that by having more stops come back earlier going the other way. Only
took them 2+ years since I've been here to decide that was an actual GOOD
IDEA.

Equally frustrating riding on the line is that the N-Judah is sometimes
actually a J-Church train that comes back right before you enter the tunnel
into Market St. The only sign it is not the one you want is the last car on
the train is locked out, and the badging for the train still shows N-Judah.

So sometimes you get on that expecting to go through the tunnel except it
dumps you right outside of it. Now you have to pray there is room leftover on
the next N-Judah line. Or alternatively you can try for the J-Church train
that is entering near where the N dropped you off. So N-Judah is the closest
line, but 50% of the time I have to use the J-Church train to actually get
into work.

And that's even assuming the tunnel into Market St. is not bogged down. Whose
genius idea was it to have all lines converge into one line?

What's the point of all this and what's it have to do with this article? Well
fucking MUNI that's what. They recently increased fees for cash
payment/limited payment card to $2.50. It is still just "$2.25" if you have a
Clipper card. When I arrived here 4 years ago it was $1? $1.25? to ride.
Literally for the increase of $1 more per ride I have seen service get
progressively worse. When this bug hit, it said 30 minutes 'til the next
N-Judah train. I tweeted to MUNI's twitter about what was going on and it took
them 20 minutes to respond. And all they can say is "technical" problem as
though 40% of the population in SF doesn't know what that really means. It is
an embarrassment. SF is suppose to be some tech capital of the world yet we
can't even ride into work without pulling our hair out over getting there.

Sorry, ranting, but it is unbelievable how incompetent our public
transportation is given how much money they have.

~~~
skuhn
I think you're misremembering what fares used to be. Muni raised single trips
to $2 in 2009 (and now it's $2.50 in 2017). Meanwhile my rent has more than
doubled in that time.

It's actually (still) much cheaper than other cities I have lived in, and
anecdotally fare evasion seems extremely high. Relative to the cost of living
here, fares should be like $5-6. Maybe with that kind of money they could
actually accomplish anything, although I kind of doubt the problem is solely
financial.

~~~
swang
You are right. I was sure that I paid less than $2 when I first moved into the
city but I looked it up and apparently it was $2 for a while before the hike.

------
glibgil
The Transit app should pay Muni drivers to use the app. Maybe $5 to $10 a
shift would be enough motivation. That would be an extra $100 to $200 a month
income

~~~
CoachRufus87
I'd be surprised if they were allowed to use their phones while working.

~~~
Zaheer
I think OP meant so that they have data for all transportation vs relying on
users crowdsourced. Still crowdsourced but with better paid sourcing :) Note
that it's passive - users don't have to do anything I believe aside from
having the app.

~~~
glibgil
Yes, this is what I mean. Drivers would not have to do anything if Transit is
smart about it. "Looks like you are a driver. You have taken two return trips
on the 14 today. Enter your debit card and keep the app installed and we'll
pay you $10 every day you drive"

~~~
jzwinck
Homeless people could just sit on buses all day and get paid for it too. And
within a few days some disruptive people will duct tape their phones plus
large batteries to the bottom of buses. Then terror alert.

~~~
janekm
The homeless part sounds like a pretty good idea. You hear a lot about startup
employees looking the other way with regard to social problems in the Bay
Area, so partial solutions like this could be interesting? Of course $10 per
day doesn't really raise anyone out of homelessness...

~~~
icebraining
Good idea? It's political suicide! Their name would be dragged in the mud
faster than you can say "exploitation". You can only offer low payments (that
is, in exchange for something, not donations) to people who don't really need
them, never to the homeless or otherwise unemployed.

------
coldshower
This is a smart use of crowdsourcing. From the app you can know the number of
people who are waiting for the bus and relying on your reporting. Kind of
gives you a sense of community. I hope this takes off.

~~~
arjie
Right. Their little smiley telling me that nine people are being helped by my
activating their app kept me longer at the stop than otherwise. The bus was
four minutes off their prediction, though.

~~~
samvermette
You're only going to get accurate departure times if someone else is using GO
on that bus/train you're waiting for!

~~~
wikibob
What does it take to add real-time data for a new city?

I've been interested in trying to scrape the data from the transit provider
here. They have what appears to be reasonably accurate arrival predictions
which they display through an atrocious app, and electronic signboards at some
bus stops. The busses have a terminal for the driver that displays how long
they need to dwell at times stops and announces the next stop, so I assume
this is (at an unknown interval) transmitting the locations to their server.

I haven't gone further in looking at it yet, because google maps will only add
data sources directly from the official transit provider.

------
eli
Neat. I had a similar idea a few years ago to make NextBus times more
accurate... but fell down a rabbit hole trying to implement it as a cross-
platform HTML app and never actually launched.

If anyone wants my idea: My perception of NextBus's arrival times are that
they're based on a very naive algorithm. I think it might literally be
assuming that all buses always move at an average 15 mph. Lots of ways to make
that more accurate with collecting just a teensy bit of actual arrival time
data.

~~~
stuckagain
I don't know about other systems but I've spent time in the field analyzing
NextMuni's predictions and they have no predictive power whatsoever. The first
arrival time is weakly correlated with actual arrival, and the 2nd and 3rd
times are not even correlated.

It's useless, essentially.

~~~
danaliv
I learned early on to discard the units when using NextMuni. The J will arrive
in three. Three what? Nobody knows, but there will be three of them.

------
Camillo
I tried downloading the app, but the app store was offline. Not sure if that's
considered ironic.

------
lanewinfield
With all of NYC's subway stations receiving cell reception as of less than a
week ago, this would be amazing for train times here.

Besides a couple lines, the train times here are all estimated—and essentially
useless.

~~~
nhf
They're working on a beacon-based train time system now [1]. Bluetooth beacons
are installed on cars with trackside sensors as trains enter and exit
stations. Station wi-fi is used to relay data about entering and exiting
trains. Since the MTA already has train speed and track length data, it gives
a pretty accurate guess at where the train is between stations.

It's not as accurate as full trackside sensors throughout the tunnels, but
much faster and cheaper to spin up. Pretty clever overlay IMO.

[1] [http://www.metro-magazine.com/rail/article/715387/nyc-
transi...](http://www.metro-magazine.com/rail/article/715387/nyc-transit-uses-
new-tech-tests-real-time-train-arrival)

------
aristus
This looks nice, but why does a bus app need to read my calendar? And photos?
And identity?

~~~
samvermette
Calendar to show a "Show Upcoming Events" option in the search. If you don't
tap it we don't access it. Photos to allow installing the app on an SD card
(popular request). Identity to use your name in the Send Feedback option. Here
again if you don't tap it we don't access it.

------
headcanon
Very impressive. The word 'agile' has bad connotations, but I think it applies
here. I hope that Transit and others can use this to jump-start their service
in smaller municipalities. My hometown's bus system isn't terrible, but
they're not the kind of organization that would see the value in making a
proper app, or by publishing real-time bus data. I would love to be able to
use an app like that where I live.

------
bfrog
Nifty, I know moovit has been doing this for a few years now as well as crowd
sourcing route information for a bit. Transit has a pretty nice UI and a few
interesting integrations. Fun to see some competition in this app space.

------
bonniemuffin
Twice in the last few days I tried to use NextMuni and it gave me super wrong
estimates, way more wrong than I've ever seen it. I wonder if this was why.
I'm really grateful to have another option available.

------
pronoiac
I like this, but then it highlights the underground train stops without mobile
signal.

------
pronoiac
Checking, I see a lot of "invalid dates" alerts on lines.

------
Zigurd
This should be crowdsourced. The official data here in the "T" bus service
area is unreliable. Crowdsourcing would also enable measuring real-world
service performance.

------
dkarapetyan
SF public transit continues to boggle the mind.

