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I agree that the information should be somewhat reliable. When I was a student at Georgia Tech, I was a frequent user of the NextBus site for the Tech shuttle system. It was accurate almost all of the time.

So I hope the bugs are worked out. However, I would love to have use even of the Beta site. I live off of 14th Street in Petworth and commute to Silver Spring. I have a couple of options for getting to work.

I can walk 12 minutes to the Petworth Metro and take two trains to work.

I can take the 14th Street Line (52, 53, 54) to Columbia Heights Metro and take two trains to work.

I can wait on the opposite side of the street and take a northbound 52 or 54 to Takoma Station and take one train to work.

Currently, I walk during rush hours (because of traffic), and I'll wait for the bus during other periods. The wait times are only 7-8 minutes most of the day, and there's a printed PDF schedule at my stop.

But if I knew a Takoma bus was coming, I'd wait on the other side of the street. Only every third bus or so goes all the way to Takoma and there's no printed schedule on that side of the street, so I never wait for that bus. However, if I could check NextBus before I left my house, and saw that a Takoma bus was approaching, I would take it more often.

Even if some arrivals weren't shown, I would still win most of the time. The only problem I would have is if it showed a bus that wasn't actually there. That would be inconvenient.

by Matt' on Mar 3, 2009 1:41 pm • link • report