I recently wrote here about our plans for regional transit data integration for the Baltimore/Washington metropolitan area.
Today, Mobility Lab’s able to share some of our initial progress with you. There are still many details to be worked out and hurdles to overcome, but we have set up a demonstration instance of OneBusAway (take a look here), which you can use to access real-time and scheduled transit data for nine of the region’s nearly two dozen transit agencies. (Don’t see your favorite agency listed? Ask it to release its data!)
OneBusAway is a suite of software packages for aggregating, transforming, and disseminating transit route and schedule information, including real-time information where available.
OneBusAway was originally developed by students at the University of Washington to provide transit information in the Puget Sound region. It has since been adopted by several more cities, and is maintained by a global collective of software developers.
To date, OneBusAway’s highest-profile deployment has been in New York City, where the MTA used OneBusAway as the core of MTA Bus Time. Working with OpenPlans and Cambridge Systematics, as well as Verifone and Cubic Transportation Systems for hardware support, the MTA developed an innovative new user interface for Bus Time, as well as significant new backend systems.
OneBusAway also offers mobile apps for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone 8, which you’ll find in the respective app stores. When you launch the app, it’ll ask you which “region” you’re in. You’ll notice that D.C. isn’t listed. That’s okay, just go into the app’s settings, find the option for entering a custom API URL, and enter http://oba.mobilitylab.org.
This is also the first time the next-generation OneBusAway interface, originally developed as part of the MTA Bus Time project, has been used outside of New York. You can preview our installation at http://oba.mobilitylab.org/nextgen/. Be forewarned, though that this interface currently only displays real-time information, so for most agencies it won’t show any arrivals. Try this stop in Arlington, or this stop in Silver Spring for some good examples.
At present, we’re able to show real-time information for ART, Montgomery County Ride On, and VRE. We also have the necessary infrastructure to show real-time Metrobus arrivals, but the interface we rely on for this data has recently become nonfunctional, due to changes in WMATA’s infrastructure. Members of the local developer community have reported the problem, and we eagerly await a fix, which we understand is now in progress.
Now, you’re probably thinking, “But I already have an app.” It’s true, there are already apps on the market that cover some of these transit agencies. But OneBusAway is more than just an app or a website, it’s transit-data infrastructure. The real value is in the underlying infrastructure. While the average transit rider won’t notice it, with OneBusAway, it’s a lot easier to plug in new transit authorities as they release their static and real-time data. For developers who have built apps using the APIs provided by OneBusAway, supporting new agencies doesn’t require changing anything in their apps – neither code nor configuration. Users open their app one morning and – presto! – they’ve got transit data for even more agencies.
These same APIs are already in use in cities around the world, so not only can developers leverage their code to support all of the agencies in the D.C. region, they can go global with their transit apps. Conversely, the barrier to entry for developers with apps built for other cities has been lowered. Instead of a patchwork of APIs for various agencies, now they’ll find a single, standards-compliant interface.
As much progress as we’ve made, this is still only a demonstration. In future posts, I’ll delve deeper into some of the issues we face in developing the infrastructure needed to make this a reliable, sustainable, and fully functional service. In addition, Mobility Lab is hosting a workshop on November 16 (register here) to introduce local transit developers to regional transit data integration with OneBusAway.
Photo by Oran Viriyincy