Comment by l72 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by l72 | Hacker News Reader

Go Transit: https://gotransitapp.com/

I've built and maintain website + iOS + Android apps for public transit for several small municipalities that don't have a good solution. I usually end up adding cities if I visit there and an unhappy with their app offering.

Most of these municipalities use a smaller 3rd party vendor for tracking their buses, but often, the user facing application is sorely lacking. My applications utilize the same data, but try to:

1. Have a simple interface for quickly tracking buses 2. Have a simple interface to see times at your stops 3. Be specific to the city/transit agency. Most of the 3rd party vendors don't white label their apps, so somehow you have to know to download the My Stop app for Birmingham, AL, even though searching the App Store for Birmingham won't bring that app up. Once you have the app, you then have to find your transit agency.

Currently, I support Availtec, RouteShout, and TransLoc.

This was originally built for me in Birmingham, and I slowly expanded it as I visited other cities.

Just a friendly heads up, but Go Transit is also the name of the regional transit system in Southern Ontario, Canada (originally named GO Transit for Government of Ontario Transit, as it started as a part of the Ontario Ministry of Transportation). Calling it out because your app looks cool, but with the direct overlap in name and product focus, it could lead to a future trademark dispute if your app takes off.

https://www.gotransit.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GO_Transit

Yeah, I know. However, I white label all the applications, so the app ends up being called "Go Birmingham", "Go Steamboat", "Go Grand Rapids", etc... My users rarely actually find https://gotransitapp.com, and typically just search for City + transit on the app store.

Do google maps / apple maps / transit / citimapper / moveit not work for these cities?

Typically they do not. The Agencies _might_ submit GTFS data, but rarely do any of these vendors provide real time data in GTFS-RT that Google/App and other would need.

I find commercial apps like transit and moveit are only willing to work with bigger cities, and have very little interest in smaller agencies.

Interesting! Have you considered reaching out to one of those (e.g. Citymapper) and see if they would like to work with you? Either employ you, subcontract you, use you as an API, or whatever! :)

I think it's really cool that you maintain such a service and maybe they can find in you a good partnership!

I tried with Moovit, but they weren't interested unless the Agency was formerly part of it. At the time I was a board member on the citizens' board which was an official board of the agency, but still didn't have enough sway. The reality is that most transit smaller agencies are so under funded and under staffed, they just don't have the resources. Your lucky if there is more than one planner and a single technical person in many of these agencies.

I was the original person to create GTFS data (before real time tracking data existed, just stops, routes, and schedules) for my transit agency back in the mid 2000s, but again, Google wouldn't accept them unless they had signed agreements with the transit Agency. So at that time, I hosted my own Open Trip Planner instance.

One more thing I'll point out, is that I am reusing data that already exists for my apps. Most agencies are recognizing how important it is to have a GPS tracker on every bus. In some cases, it isn't for the rider, but is more for the agency to plan and keep track performance.

So, I am not the source of truth, which means any 3rd party app should really be getting their data from the original vendor. It is just a shame that many of these smaller vendors want to keep the data to themselves, and aren't willing to have public GTFS-rt data or data that other commercial applications are willing to use.

A bit of an unfortunate naming/seo clash as GO Transit is the public transit service in Ontario Canada.

https://www.gotransit.com/en/

How many users have you gotten so far? Looks really nice!

Awesome work!

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