In a recent report by Marketplace, it was reported that the city of Boston’s MBTA recently released a public, web-based service interface to allow anyone to find out transit information and the location of city buses.  I listened to that report and thought, “If I could do that in Phoenix, I’d probably ride the bus more often.”  And I bet I’m not the only person who has had the same thought.

So I expressed my thoughts to Phoenix Valley Metro in the hopes that they might listen.

Valley Metro has a great website to visit and plan trips using their built in trip planner, but what if I wanted to write my own application to run on my Android phone.

Allowing an open web-based interface to city transit data could have a positive long term effect.  Software developers would be able to create a number of applications centered around transit information.

I imagine being able to look at my smart phone and find the next arriving bus for my route to work.  If the bus is late, I don’t have to hurry up and wait at the bus stop, which means I don’t have to stand and sweat in the heat and I will be more likely to ride again.

A coffee shop situated near the light rail line might have an electronic sign that prints out the next train arrival time.  I now know if I have time to grab that extra coffee and bagel for the ride or if I have to hurry to the platform.

All this adds up to increased ridership.  Releasing transit information to the public would pay long term dividends for Valley Metro without the expenditure of writing apps themselves.

After submitting these ideas to Valley Metro I received the following response:

We have been working through a process with the City of Phoenix, who controls the data, to open it up for better access. This year, we took the first step by launching the data on Google Maps. We will continue to encourage a more open source environment for our data, and I’ll bring your comments to our next web team meeting where we’ll be discussing future updates.

Thank you for taking the time to contact us and for your support!

Michael Brady
Valley Metro

So there’s some hope in getting this data to the public.  Only time will tell.