After ten years of existence, OneBusAway keeps on growing. At the Transportation Research Board conference in Washington DC earlier this month, OneBusAway joined forces with OpenTripPlanner to host its annual meeting. The open-source community got together to share the year’s accomplishments and discuss next steps.
This year, open-source developers have added new features into the app. Sean Barbeau from USF worked with Microsoft Research to add Embedded Social, a new social platform allowing users to make comments. Links to regional fare payment apps were added for Tampa, Puget Sound, and Sand Diego. HART worked with Cambridge Systematics to deploy a new service alerts platform developed in coordination with WMATA. Sean Crudden developed a new prediction method (part of TheTransitClock) based on machine learning to better forecast vehicle arrivals in unstable conditions such as passenger crowding, inclement weather, and congestion.
The mobile app is being deployed all over the world. New instances were implemented in Sroda Wielkopolska, Poland, Jackson County, Oregon, and more. San Diego MTS now runs OneBusAway on its website and as its native app. HART in Tampa, FL, integrated its streetcar service into the app.
Ten years after getting started by two Ph.D. students at University of Washington, OneBusAway is still powered by the open-source community. It thrives thanks to the academics, transit agencies, and developers who keep contributing.
Slides from the meeting are available online:
- Sean Barbeau, Why Open-source Software? (real-time multimodal information using open data and open software)
- Drew Dara-Abrams, OpenTripPlanner slides (for other information on the project and contact information, please also see http://www.opentripplanner.org)
If you would like to get involved, don’t hesitate to reach out at info@opentransitsoftwarefoundation.org
Simon J. Berrebi