Open Data Will Improve Public Transport
I was actually looking to see if anybody else had spotted that London buses now have time displays, which I reported here.
But I did find this article entitled, Smart data will only work if the network data is truly open.
The article says that London has one of the biggest real-time passenger information systems in the world. All of the data is available free for developers. The article then says this.
Developers have created more than 100 apps for the city’s buses alone. They offer everything from route planners for the disabled to scalable tube maps, with live updates when lines are disrupted, and apps that let you know where to board a train so you can get off as close to your exit as possible.
So is it right to think that as time goes on, more and better apps will be written to make difficult journeys easier?
You could envisage apps, where you entered your start and destination and the system made suggestions, as to how to get there fastest, when say the local low life had nicked the signal cable or a bus or train had broken down.
The one thing that the article misses, is the data connection from the smart device to the central system.
Surely to cope in the near future, all vehicles will have a wi-fi connection. First Manchester is reported here to be fitting wi-fi to all its buses.
Once you have a fast local connection between vehicles and passengers, other possibilities will become feasible.
As an example, I often catch a 38 bus to the Angel, where to get to Kings Cross, I change to a 73 bus or take the Northern line. If the bus had a rearward facing camera, I could link to this to check for the 73 bus.
One of the great things about this technology is that you don’t need everybody to be using it on a bus, as bus passengers will talk to each other and share their information. I say this because you see people at bus stops texting to find the arrivals and then showing them to other passengers.
None of the apps because of the open data will cost Transport for London a penny. The reverse could be true in that the apps might encourage more passengers to travel and travel on the more lightly-used part of the network. If more people travelled by bus, hopefully this would reduce car traffic, thus allowing more road space for buses.
Such is the power of software!
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The Anonymous Widower 
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