CORRECTION: A previous version of this story contained inaccuracies that have been corrected in this version.
Real-time information on when the next bus or light-rail vehicle will arrive is better this week than last week, and it should be even better in the near future.
Last week, the app known as Transit introduced a new element to Pittsburgh known as “Go,” which will use crowdsourcing to improve information about when the next transit vehicle will arrive. Port Authority is expected to introduce a new website in the next few weeks that will provide its riders with more options for finding out when the next bus or light-rail vehicle will arrive.
Stephen Miller, a spokesman for Transit, said customers who use its app already use Go to tell them when their ride is arriving. Now, the company will take that information gathered anonymously from “tens of thousands” of riders in the Pittsburgh area once their ride begins and share it with others to show exactly where their ride is and when it will arrive at their location.
“It’s like GPS for transit,” Mr. Miller said. “It will match riders with the vehicles in the database and share that information with other users.”
Transit has had a licensing agreement for the past four years with Port Authority to access the agency’s Application Program Interface, which updates the location of all of the agency’s transit vehicles every 15 to 30 seconds. Using the information provided through Go will make that information more precise, Mr. Miller said.
Transit, based in Montreal, is available in 175 cities around the world. In addition to regular transit agencies, it provides information about shared-ride services such as Uber and bike-sharing programs such as Healthy Ride Pittsburgh. Uber pays a fee for being included in the service and it sells passes for bike-share services in other cities but not in Pittsburgh.
Transit’s goal is to encourage public and shared transit services and reduce the use of personal vehicles.
“Our goal is to make it simple to get from A to B without using your own car,” Mr. Miller said. “Having real-time information on bus availability is really helpful.”
Some transit agencies, such as the Maryland Transit Administration in Baltimore, have partnered with Transit to provide its real-time information. Transit is among many similar apps, said Port Authority spokesman Adam Brandolph, and it is “by a very wide margin” the most used in the Pittsburgh area.
Regardless, Port Authority has its own system via its website and customer service center and will expand those services shortly.
“Just because the Transit app is here in Pittsburgh, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do our own,” Mr. Brandolph said. “If Port Authority can do it better, why wouldn’t we try?”
The Transit app is available at Transitapp.com.
Ed Blazina: eblazina@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1470 or on Twitter @EdBlazina.
First Published: August 27, 2018, 10:25 a.m.
Updated: August 27, 2018, 2:05 p.m.
