Mobile and Technology

The New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) recently launched a public bus tracking system that allows riders on more than 50 New York City bus routes to track real-time bus locations on the Internet, via smartphones and by text message.

Mobile Commons, a New York-based software company, shared that it has partnered with the MTA to provide the text messaging capability of MTA Bus Time — the MTA’s new public bus tracking system.

Open Plans is another New York City-based technology firm that worked with the MTA to create MTA Bus Time.

The platform allows commuters to receive live GPS data regarding the location of their bus via text message.

When a rider sends a text, Mobile Commons queries the MTA Bus Time Server, and texts back real-time bus information in seconds. Commuters can text a bus stop code or intersection and they receive a text back stating how many stops away the next bus is.

Jed Alpert, CEO of Mobile Commons, said, “Our texting capabilities allow the MTA Bus Time system to be accessible to as many people as possible. Whether you have a smartphone or a text-enabled phone, you can find out where your bus is to help make every minute count.”

By having Bus Time information readily available via text, the data is accessible to the majority of bus customers, who may not regularly carry smartphones, laptops or tablets, but do have cell phones. 

“Text messaging is the most popular form of communication in the country,” said Benjamin Stein, chief technology officer and co-founder of Mobile Commons. “By making Bus Time accessible via text message, MTA's real time-data is available to everyone, whether they use a smart phone or a feature phone.”

Roll out

MTA NYC Transit rolled out MTA Bus Time first on Staten Island, and the agency will shortly begin deployment of Bus Time technology to depots in the other boroughs. Over the next year, more than 6,000 buses and 14,000 bus stops will be upgraded in order to make Bus Time fully operational city-wide by the end of 2013. 

“Bus Time is a service that the MTA will be providing into the foreseeable future,” said Charles Monheim, MTA director of Strategic Initiatives, who is overseeing the implementation of Bus Time. “We wanted to make sure that the MTA would not be joined at the hip to one particular vendor into perpetuity, which would put us at disadvantages related to cost and control of the product. By using open standards in all aspects of Bus Time, any company that makes an off-the-shelf product can bid to provide any component of hardware or software we use in this system.”

The Bus Time team decided which open standards to use, and is working with multiple hardware and software contractors to implement the system using these standards.  In addition, the main software application powering MTA Bus Time is developed under an open source license, giving MTA complete flexibility to make changes itself or through other contractors in the future.

The open source approach used in Bus Time was piloted on the B63 by Open Plans, a New York City-based technology firm that works to support transparency in government by creating open source applications.