Nextbus in DC

I took the photo to the right at the Connecticut and K bus shelter last week. The sign displays the predicted arrival time of the next 38B bus ("The Orange Line with a View"--would that all buses had such charming nicknames). Granted, the sign was about an hour behind schedule (I took the photo at around 9:40am), but it's great to see the beginnings of a GPS-based system that could help riders plan their trips more efficiently (or at least know if they have time to duck into the deli for a breakfast sandwich). By "GPS-based", I mean that the system actually checks where the bus is, then calculates its arrival time based on its current position. Or, if you prefer your explanations to rely heavily on clipart, click here for an alternate description.

The sign is powered by a service called NextBus, who in January were awarded a $2,001,829 contract for outfitting the DC system with the full suite of Nextbus technology: accessing arrival times via the internet, wireless technology, and electronic signs. Oddly, a powerpoint presentation on WMATA's website implies the partnership is between ClearChannel and NextBus; part of the agreement that allowed ClearChannel to build shelters throughout downtown DC in exchange for exclusive advertising rights on those shelters. But my guess is that the bullet point actually refers to Clear Channel's obligation to put up LCD arrival-time signs, not bankroll the infrastructure itself.

So who are these "Nextbus" folks, and what are their plans for our beloved Metrobus system? Most notably, they serve San Francisco's MUNI system. For years the SF system has been hailed as the most abysmal public transportation network in the country, and adding Nextbus technology doesn't seem to have made much of a dent in its reputation. Most Technorati hits for "Nextbus" turn up angry San Francisco bloggers complaining about the system's inaccuracy, incompleteness, and general dumbness. A much-cited SFist post (which some bloggers generously titled an "expose") explains how even though it seems like only a few routes were available via the NextBus website, in reality the system was tracking every route and simply not displaying the majority. SCANDAL!!1

[Aside: Want to hear the REAL scandal? Nextbus's parent company...IS CANADIAN! That's right. Canadian. Just imagine the damage that those Canadians could do simply by tweaking a few lines of code in their Canadian bus-tracking system. We could all be twenty to thirty minutes late to work--or even a half hour. And don't think the Canadians wouldn't capitalize on those lost productivity minutes! Because they WOULD!]

Seriously, though--GPS bus tracking is a potentially fantastic idea, but hiring Nextbus for both the backend and the frontend of this project is a major misstep. Outsourcing the infrastructure to a private company makes some sense, especially judging from the steady growth of Nextbus's Canadian overlords in the business of GPS-enabled commercial fleet tracking. But why use Nextbus for serving the information to riders online? Their website and interface is circa 1994 and lacks the cool features (widgets? text message alerts? "average lateness" calculators?) that you'd expect from a Web 2.0ish service. Of course, the ideal course of action would be for WMATA to open up the API and let people go crazy figuring out their own applications, web-based or otherwise. But a distant second would be for WMATA to take the front-end in-house. Hire some people who know--or can learn--how to program nifty GPS-based web apps, and in the end WMATA will have far more flexibility, as well as not having to go crying to Nextbus every time they need to add a route or fix a bug. Innovations like the Circulator and the decision to go with Nextbus in the first place show that Dan's regime has the right idea about the future of our bus system--they just need to trust their instincts, not crazy Canadian consultants.