Dear BoltBus
ron.gejman.com
ron.gejman.com
In my experience, BoltBus and Megabus have extremely poor customer service. I've had multiple bad experiences with them and as a result I refuse to use their services any more.
Last month I waited an hour and a half in 40 degree weather for the Megabus from NYC to Philadelphia. Throughout that time, none of the staff on site had any idea of what was going on, or if they did no one told us what the problem was and when we could expect the next bus to arrive. We heard later that both buses scheduled during that time had broken down.
And I know that, for instance, the Swiss railways can also be tracked in real time: http://www.swisstrains.ch/
When I saw Salt in the theater, there's a scene where Evelyn Salt, in disguise, rides in from DC to New York. The audience laughed when they saw her on the BoltBus.
He then wrote the company saying they should install GPS tracking in the buses so a customer would know exactly when it was going to arrive and could thus seek shelter in a coffee shop until the last minute.
Finally, Megabus already has a system that's supposed to send you a text message if the bus is delayed. It never works.
I'm not sure how their scheduling works, but certainly they do have some sort of computerized scheduling system. When I called the operator at 8:35 today she put me on hold for ~40 seconds while she, presumably, looked up the status of the bus. I wonder if they don't already have an informal internal service for keeping track of bus status?
In spite of this, it's my favorite way of traveling between cities, right after the train system, although I rarely use the latter, since the prices are outrageously high in the US.
(side note - is this a common business concept or term, for adding premium services and then just adding that into the price later with the services included?)
Could a savvy hacker whip something like this up fairly easy? Possibly, but they would need to find this person first.