Real-time Bus Schedule Information may soon be only "One Bus Away"

During Monday's HART Major Projects & Legislative Committee meeting, HART unveiled a real-time passenger pilot project underway between HART and USF's Center for Urban Transportation Research (CUTR). The pilot is testing One Bus Away, transportation technology that tells users where their bus is and how much time until the next one departs. Similar technology is currently offered by PSTA to its customers. 

HART was chosen for this pilot because of its property size, physical proximity to CUTR, as well as previous partnerships that already involved the use of HART data. 

One Bus Away provides Real-time info

Over the next year, the pilot will focus on one or two major routes, and target its potential use for web, Droid Smartphones, and basic cell phones. The pilot will research the feasibility of deploying this technology to the entire HART network, including via text messages and integrating it with the current HART Interactive Voice Response system.

HART currently makes its data of scheduled times available for third-party application developers; and RouteShout, TransitTimes and Mapnificent use this data to provide customers with different online and smartphone applications.

Stay tuned for more updates about this pilot project!

Next HART Board Meeting

• July 16: Finance, Governance & Administration Committee, then Regular Board
 

It's Mapnificent!

Want to see how far you can go from your location in a certain amount of time on HART? There's now an app for that!

HART released our General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS), or scheduling data, about a month ago and we now have the first "app" created using the data.

Mapnificent.

Mapnificent is a free web-based application that utilizes HART scheduling data (times, stops, frequencies, etc.) to formulate and display the results over Google Maps. You can drag the pin around for different locations, use the slider for different maximum times, and go to settings to choose times and days of week. You can also drag the pin around to find the half way meeting point between friends living across town.

Mapnificent was created by a 23-year-old graduate student named Stefan Wehrmeyer, a graduate student in Germany. "I hope people use it to find the best place to live, work and meet, said Wehrmeyer on his blog. "That they discover new things about their public transport system."

If you would like a more in depth look of the functionality of Mapnificent, please watch the video below. Wehrmeyer gives a great tutorial on using Mapnificent to accomplish a number of tasks.

Mapnificent from Stefan Wehrmeyer on Vimeo.

Mapnificent is now live in Tampa and can be found by going to www.mapnificent.net/tampa

Reminder: HART does not endorse any 3rd party applications, including Mapnificent . However, we do support providing our patrons with options, and having our data open for public consumption and ingenuity.

If you are interested in developing a 3rd party application, please visit the HART Developer's page located here.