MTA BusTime: Real Time GPS Tracking of New York City Buses

MTA Bus Time (http://bustime.mta.info/) is an amazing new project by the New York MTA that allows bus riders to find the real-time location of the next several buses that will arrive at their stop.

MTA Bus Time was built on an open source and open standards-based platform using commercial technologies provided by multiple different partners. It uses GPS hardware and wireless communications technology to track real-time bus locations, integrate with route and schedule information, and makes the result accessible across a huge array of interfaces, including the web, a mobile website, on iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, SMS text messaging, and via an open developer API.

Bus Time ran as a pilot on the B63 bus line in Brooklyn early last year, was expanded to Staten Island in January of 2012, will launch in the Bronx by the end of 2012, and will be deployed across all of New York City by the end of 2013.

Michael Frumin, Systems Engineering Manager at the MTA, Jeff Maki, head of Transportation at OpenPlans, and Benjamin Stein, CTO of Mobile Commons will present the technology behind this amazing project, including the unique technology challenges rolling out a high profile project in NYC.