

Show HN: Twin Cities Transit "Where's My Bus?" - pwenzel
http://tctransit.mobi/trip/go/21/westbound/6CED#bus

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Bluem00
Thanks for posting! I live in Minneapolis and rely on the bus system for
transport. So far it's easier to use than the NextTrip website on my phone.

For my usual trip each day there are several buses that work for me, and what
I was hoping for is a site that centers a map on my location (from my phone
gps) and shows me all buses in my general vicinity. I would use this to select
a route.

~~~
pwenzel
That's definitely something I've been thinking about. It adds another level of
complexity though, so I'm taking my time with it.

Do I add some type of "sign-in" functionality to save bookmarks to a profile?
Or just let people save bookmarks to a cookie? (by bookmarks, I mean stops)

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godisdad
I've made a similar app with slightly different navigation using the same
Nextrip API: <http://mtransit.herokuapp.com/schedule/17900>

I need to tweak my full-text search and general layout. But your addition of
maps is a nice touch. Adding the location of the stop with a separate icon may
be a nice addition.

~~~
pwenzel
Nice to see what other developers are doing with the Nextrip API. I think the
market for transit data is going to get pretty busy in the near future!

As an aside, stops are marked with a red marker icon, and buses with a bus
icon. This is consistent with the regular "stop" map displayed by default on
departure listings. The map icons need a little love, and I'm open to
suggestions.

~~~
godisdad
Ah, I understand the map now. I'm bleary-eyed and missed that.

My grand vision was to do a comet-style app where you see the buses "move"
towards your position/stop on a Google Map -- but I haven't been able to sit
down and design that yet.

They've added a few more endpoints recently:

<http://svc.metrotransit.org/NexTrip/help>

Although, I am annoyed because:

NexTrip/{ROUTE}/{DIRECTION}/{STOP}

does not accept the same kind of IDs as the main endpoint 'NexTrip/{STOPID}'
and also there are not valid {STOP} ids for every stop on a route.

~~~
pwenzel
It's true. I've also caught a stop ID with a space in it, which seemed kind of
non-standard. It caused an error that I was able to fix.

Otherwise the API is a nice service. Previous versions of TCTransit relied on
scraping. Dirty, but it still performed nicely.

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badhairday
I wish Philadelphia provided easy access to real-time transit information. I
think the city is finally starting to release that information publicly via
APIs. Hopefully we'll have something soon.

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bharad
Very nice app. Nice UI. Just made me realize how much I miss Minneapolis.

Where do u get the data for location of the bus? Is there someway, I can zoom
out on the map?

~~~
pwenzel
Data comes from Metrotransit's API, updated at 30-second intervals.

Presently the maps are static images, as the site is designed first for mobile
devices (desktop traffic represents less than 1% of my traffic).

I plan to have interactive maps for desktop users in the future.

You can click on the maps to see your stop in Google Maps, or the Google Maps
app on your mobile device.

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mattee
Nice. This is much better than Metrotransit's mobile website.

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desigooner
Nice effort.

I use nextbus.com here in Boston and used it back at school at Rutgers. While
their mobile website is pretty nifty, the web UI needs quite some work.

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rsanchez1
We have a really nice bus tracking system here in Gainesville. It is located
here:

<http://ufl.transloc.com/>

The desktop website uses flash, but the mobile website uses Javascript. What's
really nice is how it uses Google Maps and overlays bus positions in real
time. The bus positions are accurate to within a few seconds, so I can decide
exactly when to leave for the bus stop and which bus to take.

