[bko]

So I guess the question is why isn't this available in many other places? The technology has been available for a long time. In a free market you would allow competitors to enter with a better product and displace the one that's falling behind. Hopefully this will be a step in the right direction

[_verandaguy]

    > So I guess the question is why isn't this available in many other places? The technology has been available for a long time

This is ubiquitous in even small Canadian cities, like Thunder Bay and Sault, though it often comes through a partnership with the Transit app (which I have complex feelings about -- the ubiquity is nice, but having a publicly-funded option would be better, and I question whether Transit is doing anything underhanded with usage data; the app has a paid plan, but it's plenty usable without it).

I live in a bigger city (Toronto), and speaking from experience, locations tend to be accurate to within a minute or so on most routes, and the app does a good job of telling you about route changes due to maintenance or detours due to construction.

Pre-Transit, Ottawa -- a medium-sized city in its own right -- had a system where you'd text a service your bus stop number and it'd give you the next bus's estimated next pass at that stop; I know that early on, that just did a lookup of the static bus schedule, but I believe it eventually started using live location data (though by that time I was using early versions of Transit anyway).

The US has this problem where transit gets continuously underfunded and people then act surprised when it's sub par. Canadian transit needs a lot of love, but US transit's consistently been some of the worst I've ever had to use.

[bko]

Is funding really the problem? I don't know why it would cost so much to put a tracker on the bus and have someone build an app. Or even just posting the location to a website, or maybe text message? I understand digging tunnels under NYC would be expensive but this seems like it would be a great bang for the buck in terms of convenience

[mrguyorama]

Are you sure it ISN'T available?

It's the norm in my "City" of 60k that nobody ever thinks about.

Fuck, it was the situation with the contracted, private buses used to shuttle people back and forth in my split campus college.

Is it available where you are and you just don't realize?

It's a service that any municipality can purchase.

[danans]

> So I guess the question is why isn't this available in many other places?

Probably because voters and politicians in those places don't value public transportation.

[jasonhong]

My colleagues who studied this issue told me that there were several patents on bus tracking, making it cost prohibitive for many cities.

It also led to the Tiramisu project, which used people's smartphones to track buses and how crowded those buses were. https://tiramisutransit.com/

[fidotron]

Public transit agencies are not free to pick the best suppliers; there are political considerations at best and outright corruption at worst.

[ryoshoe]

Real-time bus tracking is available in the all the cities Uber is testing this service in.

[gamblor956]

Outfitting hundreds or thousands of busses costs a lot of money. Maintaining the equipment costs more money.

The lack of availability comes down to priorities. Most bus agencies don't have the spare cash lying around to do this.

[FuriouslyAdrift]

Buses also tend to destroy roads. https://www.kgw.com/article/news/verify/yes-bus-more-road-da...