Allen Stern says he had a 40-minute wait between buses when he lived in Manhattan. Using a free mobile app that became available about a year ago, he could tap into the Metropolitan Transit Authority with his cellphone and find out exactly how far away the next bus was from his stop. “If you could stay in your house another 10 minutes because you know the bus isn’t here yet, and don’t have to stand in freezing rain till it gets there, wouldn’t you?”
Cities across the USA are increasingly using the Internet and smartphone technology to help riders make connections with their transit systems, whether the system is bus, rail or tram.
Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Boston are among the cities that have begun test-driving systems within the past eight months. Orlando announced in July that it had given the green light to a project to provide bus schedule information on select routes to riders with smartphones by October.
San Francisco, Washington and Chicago also have apps that allow riders to use their Internet-accessible phones to get real-time information showing when their next bus or train is due.
“It’s part of what had to happen in the evolution of transit, bringing technology into it,” said Stern, who maintains a public transportation blog called Inside Transit.
Most apps are available for all kinds of phones with Internet access, he said. The apps provided by the municipal transit authority are free. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority relaunched its “Next Bus” program in July 2009 after a trial run in 2007. Next Bus is available on 335 routes with 12,000 stops for no charge.
Apps designed by third-party developers sometimes come with a fee. “Exit Strategy NYC” is $4.99 through iTunes and plots which subway stop is nearest your intended destination. The San Francisco Bay Area Rapid…