A Pittsburgh native once asked me what I disliked the most about Pittsburgh. As soon as he heard the phrase “public transportation” come out of my mouth, he smiled knowingly and responded sagely: “well, it basically doesn’t exist.”
Bus schedules are rarely accurate (and “rarely” is fairly generous). I’ve seen three buses of the exact same route lined up right behind one another, and a 45-minute wait for the 59U is basically par for the course. As a student, it doesn’t help that Carnegie Mellon’s shuttle systems suck too, in my opinion (only because there is very poor communication of transit options to the student body).
Many cities (Chicago, most notably) have implemented AVL systems that track the locations of buses to provide dynamic, accurate schedules. The problem? It costs money, and Pittsburgh Port Authority is — for all intents and purposes — bankrupt.
This semester, I’m joining John Zimmerman and a team of other students and researchers to see if we can design a community-powered bus tracking system. The basic idea is that a bus-rider can report the location and fullness of a bus, and then we can provide this data to other riders to provide a more accurate tracking system.
This raises many interesting questions. Is it possible to cultivate a sense of ownership and responsibility over your city’s transit system? Perhaps not, but can we at least make the recognized usefulness of such a system overpower the work required to contribute, so that people will willingly and actively participate? How do we incentivize participation?
Meanwhile, can we create a solution that, as a side effect, also provides an outlet for communication between the Port Authority and the riders — a relationship that, as of right now, is rife with frustration? And how do we ensure that such a system is fully accessible to the many blind, deaf, and mobility-impaired transit users?
Zimmerman, Daisy Yoo, and others have been working on this for approximately a year; I’m just joining in. It’ll be interesting to see where it goes.