Waiting for the Bus Is About to Get Less Bad

A collaboration between Google and transit tech company TransLoc could bring real-time transportation data to even more agencies.
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OK, so the New York City subway is falling apart. Washington, DC’s Metro sometimes catches on fire and had to undergo serious repairs. But fear not, dear rider (OK, maybe fear a little bit). Data—with a little bit of help from Google—could make your commute significantly less excruciating.

Believe it or not, American public transit agencies have been doing something in the last decade or so to better themselves: collecting real-time transit data and making it available to the public. That's the info that helps you figure out when rides will actually show up in a given place. The data has made it possible for over 600 American transit agencies to integrate with Google Maps. This is, of course, very useful to riders in those places, mostly bigger cities.

Now, a hook-up between the search-n’-everything-else giant and the transit technology company TransLoc will make it easier for more agencies to get their hundreds of thousands lines of data into a format Google Maps can read—for free. Behold: The magic of real-time data shall spread throughout the land like so much fairy dust. Because real-time data plays some fascinating psychological tricks on you.

“Waiting is one of the most disliked elements of a transit trip—no one likes waiting,” says Candace Brakewood, a civil engineer with the City College of New York who studies public transportation and how riders use real-time transportation apps. Her research shows that accurate information makes waiting more tolerable, and riding public transportation pleasant-er overall.

Sure, knowing when your bus will actually get to your stop in the morning saves you from standing out in the cold unnecessarily. But accurate arrival info also makes the waiting feel shorter. “When people are standing at the bus stop or the station they often think they’re standing there two or three times longer than they actually are,” says Brakewood. Researchers who surveyed Seattle-area riders found that those who used real-time transit information thought they were waiting for an average 2.5 minutes shorter than those without the info.

TransLoc

Overall, research finds real-time transit information makes riders happier and can actually grow ridership, perhaps up to 2 percent. For struggling transit agencies, that can be hundreds of thousands of rides per year—no piddling number.

But getting that real-time info into Google Maps and where riders can see it is no simple task, particularly for small agencies suffering through gaps in funding and staff. “One of the things that was holding transit agencies back were all these technical barriers,” says Doug Kaufman, the CEO of TransLoc. To input their information into Google Maps, agencies must upload tens and thousands of lines of code into a specialized transit format—and that code has to be error-free. So ... good luck with that, especially if there are no designated techies on your team.

TransLoc’s tool, called Architect, is built to make that process pain-free. It manages transit agency data, in the format Google Maps needs. The company says about 100 agencies have used the free tool since it launched a few months ago, with five to ten new ones jumping aboard each week.

Now, not all agencies have the equipment they need to get real-time data efforts up and running right away. To give riders an honest-to-Jove sense of where their late bus or tram is dallying, vehicles must be equipped with specialized GPS, which constantly pings info back to the agencies’ computers. That's not cheap. Most of America’s 6,800 agencies don’t have that hardware, or don’t have hardware that spits out info fitting Google’s data specifications. TransLoc wants to help agencies on the right track, uploading static scheduling data first and moving into real-time as soon as the agencies have the gadgets they need.

Yeah, American transit still has big funding issues, and rusting infrastructure that needs time and help. But real-time transit could make riding a little better. So spread, spread, the magic data dust.