Posts about Real-time Bus

According to a brief by the Georgetown Climate Center, "ArrivalStar has brought suit against at least ten transit entities, and at least eight more have received demand letters." GCC, which convenes the Transportation Climate Initiative, worries that the suits can create a chilling effect, discouraging agencies from employing vehicle tracking technologies. Real-time bus arrival information has been shown to increase ridership, taking cars off the road and reducing vehicle emissions.

Jones' strategy is not to sue transit agencies for all they're worth, but to offer them a relatively low-cost way to keep these cases out of court. In fact, not one of his lawsuits has gone all the way through trial. They always end up settling, usually for $50,000 to $75,000, though the demands can go as high as $200,000.

"That's $75,000 of taxpayer money that's going into ArrivalStar's pockets without the validity of the patent ever being challenged," said attorney Babak Siavoshy, who represents the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "If they make the settlement amount low enough, where the costs and benefits favor settling, then most municipalities are going to settle, and it costs them a lot of money, because the cost of litigation is a big stick."

Siavoshy and EFF want the US Patent and Trademark Office to review Jones' patents. EFF is looking for what's known as "prior art": examples of real-time vehicle tracking being discussed before Jones took out the patent, to show that he wasn't the first one with the idea. Advocates also think they can prove that the systems Jones patented were too "obvious" or "non-novel"—that they were logical extensions of existing technology. Abstract ideas, with no technology or product attached, are not patentable.

ArrivalStar attorney Anthony Dowell contends that the patents are defensible and that Jones has the right to seek money from the agencies. "Just because an entity is funded with taxpayer dollars doesn't give them the right to steal property," said Dowell in a recent interview with ArsTechnica. "My client now owns 34 patents that are being infringed, and what else is he to do?"

The transit agencies I called couldn't comment, since the case was pending. But the general counsel of the Monterey-Salinas Transit Corporation, David Laredo, said that they're not challenging the validity of the patents. Their strategy is to assert that the vendor who sold the technology to the transit agency (Trapeze, a spinoff of Siemens) does hold a license from ArrivalStar, and if they don't, that's the vendor's problem, not theirs.

To date, ArrivalStar has reached settlements with the city of Fairfax, Virginia; Boston's MBTA; New York City's MTA; Chicago's Metra; and the Maryland Transit Authority. Suits are pending against the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's PATH; King County, Washington; the Monterey-Salinas Transit Corporation; the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority; and Portland's TriMet.

In the past, transit agencies may not have talked to each other about these lawsuits because Jones reportedly insists on a nondisclosure agreement as part of the settlement. He only brings a few suits at a time, using a divide-and-conquer strategy, taking care not to demand so much from these public entities that they would pursue litigation.

The recent focus of Jones' lawsuits on transit agencies has inspired Georgetown Climate Center and the American Public Transit Association to get these entities to communicate more and to develop a more cohesive strategy. So far, though, Jones' strategy has been working.

But since Jones brought a suit against the U.S. Postal Service last November, the federal government is now affected. His suit charges the post office with violating his patents with its package tracking services.

Since USPS is a federal agency, the Department of Justice is now involved, defending the post office against ArrivalStar's claims by saying the patents are invalid and that no infringement occurred. Advocates and attorneys are trying to persuade the feds to broaden their interest in ArrivalStar from just USPS to all the transit agencies that have been affected.

After all, the transit agencies, by and large, bought the GPS tracking devices with federal dollars, in pursuit of federal transportation goals. Publicly available real-time transit information—on smartphone apps, transit agency websites, or on screens in bus stops and train stations—makes transit a more attractive option, with the potential to reduce congestion and pollution. SAFETEA-LU, the transportation authorization the country is still (amazingly) working under, specifically requires states to identify ways to deliver real-time transit information to the public.

Georgetown Climate Center Director Vicki Arroyo told Streetsblog that she's had some "early but hopeful discussions" with senior USDOT officials.

"Earlier, some of the more junior people within the federal government were not keen to take this on, saying they didn't have a dog in the fight. Now they do," she said, referring to the suit against the postal service. "We're hoping they won't just look at this as a one-off matter. There's a much higher public stake here."

A version of this article was originally posted at Streetsblog Capitol Hill.

Editor's note: The MBTA's response brief to ArrivalStar rebuts the company's actions with powerful rhetoric that's unusual for a legal filing:

This lawsuit offends any notion of justice. The mission of Defendant Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority ("MBTA") is to transport its 1.1 million riders safely and on time every day. As a service to the riding public, the MBTA alterts riders via its website, text message or email whether one of its vehicles is running late or has otherwise encountered some difficulty or delay. Though the MBTA is a cash-strapped public entity, its notification service is free of charge to anyone who wishes to subscribe. The MBTA makes no money from this service. The service provides a benefit to the riding public, by whom it has been well received.

Plaintiffs ArrivalStar S.A. and Melvino Technologies Limited (collectively, "Plaintiffs" or "Arrivalstar"), two offshore companies, allege, in a conclusory and unspecified manner, that the technology underpinning the MBTA's alert system infringes on two patents that they claim to own. Plaintiffs do not allege they produce or manufacture anything. They do not allege they sell anything. The primary, if not sole, purpose of Arrivalstar is to exact tribute from any person that Arrivalstar asserts is using inventions claimed in patents that they purport to own, either in the form of royalties or a strike suit such as this one. The Court may take notice of the fifteen suits Plaintiffs, or a related entity, have brought in federal district courts involving the same two patents at issue in this dispute. ...

In any event, the practice of monetizing patents through serial litigation by "non-practicing entities" or "NPEs," as they are euphemistically known, is unseemly and inimical to the fundamental purpose of United States patent laws of encouraging innovation and its introduction into the economy. The business model of Plaintiffs is no less obvious than the patents themselves, and shakedowns such as this one should be outlawed.

In the DC region, travelers often can choose among many transit routes and modes. To help travelers, maps and apps display a variety of information, like the routes in a geographically accurate or diagram form, vehicle arrival times or positions, and more.

It would be extremely useful to transit users, transit agencies, and app designers to understand exactly what displayed information is really helping travelers make better choices. Fortunately, Hartwig Hochmair, now a professor at the University of Florida, designed a clever web experiment (PDF) that helps answer this very question.

For simplicity, let's assume that travelers want to find the fastest route. Not all do; some prefer a trip where they can get a seat, or prefer the smooth ride of rails over a bus. But many do want to minimize overall travel time.

However, it's not always simple to figure out the fastest route. Maps can't contain all the information to decide this perfectly, and the rider usually has limited time to make a choice. So travelers quickly pick a subset of information, one of several "proxy variables," and use it to choose a route, such as:

• Shortest total distance
  
• Fewest number of stops traveled
  
• Most linear route, heading straight toward the destination
  
• Fewest transfers, for less total waiting time
  
• Most transfer options at each station, allowing a switch to the first train in the direction of the destination

Do people choose different proxy criteria depending on how a map displays the information? Hochmair asked experiment participants to plan trips on the metro system in Vienna, Austria. That system has many interconnected lines, giving riders many choices among complex routes.

Hochmair's participants saw 5 different displays:

• A geographically accurate map
  
• A diagrammatic map based on the official map
  
• A map showing the real-time positions of vehicles
  
• A map with service frequencies, showing the time between arrivals per line
  
• A map showing the next departure time for all lines from the starting point

He tested 35 people with varying levels of Vienna metro experience by giving them 40 route-finding problems apiece. Based on the routes chosen, he was able to use a statistical model to conclude that while people used distance information in every map, the different maps also caused people to use different proxy criteria for planning their route:

• The geographically accurate map led people to pay attention to the number of stops traveled.
  
• The diagrammatic map, and the map showing next departures, led people to pay more attention to the total number of transfers.
  
• The map showing service frequencies caused people to pay more attention to the number of transfer options at each stop.

Which of these maps is the best to help people minimize travel time? For the complex trips in Hochmair's study, inexperienced users benefited most from having service frequencies. Meanwhile, for experienced users, service frequencies also turned out to be best, with vehicle positions second.

The study still concludes that a map with real-time information is better than a plain map. But the usefulness of real-time information decreases as the number of transfers increases, because a traveler doesn't know exactly when they will arrive at each transfer point. For trips with more transfers, most travelers would be better off following a route where service is most frequent.

Most transit maps do not contain this information. Bus maps like WMATA's standard map (PDF), for instance, show every line the same size and weight whether it runs once an hour or every 3-5 minutes. WMATA's planning department did put together a map of routes with buses more frequent than 4 times per hour, and the agency should actively promote this clear and helpful tool.

A final lesson of this study is that, between different traveler preferences and the different ways travelers use information, agencies and app designers must keep the needs of different users in mind. But all can take fairly low-cost steps to help riders by making service frequency information more prominent.

One of the main challenges in convincing people to switch to transit is the unpredictability of bus arrivals. If every stop featured a digital screen displaying the number of minutes until each bus arrived, more people would be willing to take the bus.

Outdoor screens, however, are expensive to install, which is why we created this indoor alternative at a fraction of the cost. For the past few months I have been working with Andy Chosak and David Alpert at the Mobility Lab in Arlington to bring this low-cost alternative to fruition.

Every 20 seconds, our web server queries each transit agency for the arrival predictions for the stops near both test sites, then relays the data to the screens. The actual unit inside the shops is just a low-cost, barebones Linux system connected to a standard computer monitor and the business's own Wi-Fi and power. We've configured the box to automatically load up the screen when it starts, so there's no need to log in or launch an app after the unit is plugged in.

We are continuing to build the system so it can be deployed quickly and cheaply throughout the region at participating shops, bars, cafes, and restaurants. Ultimately, a business will be able to sign up, type in their address, and get a screen automatically customized with the nearest bus stops, Metro station, and Capital Bikeshare station. And someone with their own computer connected to a standard computer monitor will be able to set up their own screen for free.

This project is only possible thanks to open data from our transit agencies. We can only pull bus and train predictions as well as the status of each CaBi station because the agencies behind these systems have wisely chosen to provide stop locations, route information, and real-time arrival predictions to outside software developers.

If you run a businesses are interested in finding out more about purchasing one of these screens for your location, let us know at screens@mobilitylab.org.

Capital Bikeshare is a successful example of how to do this right. CaBi has its own website, which is perfectly nice. But it doesn't do everything. It doesn't tell you if show visibly on the map which stations are empty or full, and it's not on your smartphone. Nor is it on a digital screen on the wall of your neighborhood bar.

A company called 8D has a relationship with CaBi and other Bixi-based bike sharing systems to create an app, SpotCycle, which provides many useful functions, but one app can't do everything either. What if someone else can do better, or do more than just that app can do?

Fortunately, there's a computer-readable XML file for Capital Bikeshare (and all other Bixi-based systems) which lists the real-time status of all stations in the system. The availability of that data allowed Daniel Gohlke to create CaBi Tracker, arguably a better system map than the official one. Many other mobile apps exist using the same data, each trying to be better than the next.

At the Mobility Lab, we're creating real-time digital displays that show buses, rail, and Capital Bikeshare all on one screen at the same time. That's never going to be something Capital Bikeshare funds itself, but it's potentially a very useful tool, and it's possible thanks to the feed.

It's great that Capital Bikeshare offers this, but not every service does.

As one of many examples, the USDOT and local governments have funded a research project at the University of Maryland to create a real-time traffic information site for the I-95 corridor. It's a good start, but very limited.

UMD could evaluate even more ways to assist travelers if someone could make an app, screen, or site that showed this information in even more ways. Unfortunately there appears to be no feed. The utility of this project is therefore drastically limited, and its funding is not going as far as it could.

Montgomery County spent a bunch of money for a web tool that lets riders to see the location and predictions for Ride On buses, but didn't include a feed or API (Application Programming Interface). The MARCTracker tool to see the location of MARC trains doesn't appear to have an API, either.

Now, no other apps can integrate the information and present it to more users. We can't put Ride On or MARC on the real-time screens, and mobile app developers can't add it to their tools. Plus, the Ride On tracking website already looks clunky and out of date, and it's still in a beta test phase. The county put their money into buying something that's already behind the curve and which can't accommodate future improvements.

Meanwhile, WMATA, DC Circulator, and ART all have feeds or APIs that allow apps and other services to retrieve their real-time information and show it to riders. This has all sorts of advantages, not the least of which is that their data can all be combined into a single website. For example, Transit Near Me, Mobility Lab's recent transit app, is only possible with the data from these transit services, but can't include Ride On.

These transit services are run by public agencies, but open data is equally important when the public is paying a private company for a transportation service. Governments should require open data in every contract with private providers.

For example, the one-way car sharing company car2go offers an API for integrating with other apps, but Zipcar and many other car sharing companies do not. When the city dedicates on-street parking spaces to car sharing companies, they are giving away a valuable resource. In exchange for that resource, the city should demand the company open its data, and require that feeds or APIs remain public in the future.

Open data offers absolutely tremendous opportunity for transportation providers to improve their service to users, and it is essentially free. All they have to do is put their data out there, and someone will take advantage of it to produce a useful tool.

Disclosure: I am leading a team at the Mobility Lab that is building Transit Near Me, real-time screens, and potentially other tools which take advantage of feeds from transportation providers.

Fairfax's county government offices are difficult to access by public transit. Only two Fairfax Connector routes serve them. But not all residents can afford to or want to own a car, and those who can't or won't drive are at a decided disadvantage in being able to fully participate in society.

I had to visit the county seat two years ago to register to vote in Virginia; my permanent address was then my parents' house in Kingstowne. I had to register in person during office hours, but my parents both worked. Living in the District and lacking access to a car, I took the Metro to Vienna and then took a Fairfax Connector to the county office.

I had never been to the county offices before and I wasn't familiar with the area. The stops weren't announced, so I had to be extra careful about when to get off. I ended up getting off the bus too early and had to walk the rest of the way.

When I left the office, I walked to what I thought was the stop for the bus back to the Metro. The bus stop sign didn't have the route number. Suburban streets also aren't marked as clearly as city streets, so finding the intersection where my bus stopped wasn't as easy.

It turns out I was at the wrong bus stop, but as the bus approached, I was able to hustle to the correct stop, which luckily was nearby. If the stop flag had been marked, I would have known at which stop I should wait. If I had missed the bus, I would have had to wait at least 30 minutes for the next one.

When traveling after dark, it can be hard to identify bus stops while on the bus. Announcing the stops would make it easier for riders to know where they are. Stop announcements don't always work, but having them fail sometimes is better than not having them at all.

Adding route numbers to bus stops signs would require a minimal investment, but would make it much easier for riders to know if they are in the right place. Fairfax Connector route numbers are often shown on shelters, where they exist, but not on stop flags. Metrobus, Montgomery's Ride On and Arlington's ART, on the other hand, show route numbers on almost all stop flags. Ride On's even show the route's ultimate destination, so you don't find yourself on the correct route but going the wrong way.

Automated stop announcements require that buses be equipped with GPS, which is a bigger investment. Ride On is piloting real-time tracking, which would be useful for the Connector. GPS tracking could also bring NextBus' ability to predict how many minutes until the bus arrives to Fairfax Connector riders.

More attractive, easier to understand bus service can make suburban communities easier to navigate and reduce the need for driving. These two wayfinding improvements won't suddenly bring residents out of their cars. But they can make life easier for current bus riders and make buses a better option for those hesitant to ride.

The image color-codes bus trips by their average speed. Buses are fastest on freeway segments, slower on most city streets, slowest in the dense neighborhood cores. Some of this is road speed, but buses also move more slowly in areas where there are more stops and more people boarding and alighting.

Since buses only report their location every few minutes and can't report inside tunnels, the bluest lines show up as fuzzier sets of spread-out lines.

WMATA created a similar, but more diagrammatic and less artistic, set of maps for DC buses:

This is just one of the many applications people can create on their own, thanks to having open data publicly available. The more transit agencies provide, the more useful tools people can create, whether very practical mobile apps or beautiful and informative visualizations like this one.

A map application lets you enter a stop, pick a stop from a list of routes and their stops, or enter an address. The map then shows the entire route, a green circle at the stop's location, and the position of buses along with an estimate about when they will arrive.

One potentially tricky element for those picking routes is that you have to choose routes just by number; there's no explanatory name for each route, as there is with Metrobus, to help riders know if they have the right route.

According to Carolyn Biggins, chief of the Division of Transit Services for Montgomery County DOT, Montgomery County will also be placing some digital signs showing real-time arrival information. When the new "Paul S. Sarbanes Multimodal Center" opens in Silver Spring in the spring, it will have signs, and Montgomery hopes to add more "in the next few years."

One of the most valuable aspects of real-time data is the way most systems provide an API, a computer interface that lets other applications like smartphone apps or Web tools from outside the agency access the real-time bus predictions.

People have already developed many useful tools, and the Mobility Lab in Arlington is working now on some more, including more low-cost digital screens which can combine data from multiple bus providers. Doing this requires having APIs for each bus system.

Metrobus, Circulator, Arlington's ART, and Fairfax CUE buses already offer real-time arrival data, accessible to developers through APIs. This allows Web and mobile apps to aggregate data from all the systems and display it all in one place.

Biggins says, "Ride On also plans to offer the data in an open format for people to use in other applications as well." However, Kurt Raschke explains that the system Montgomery County chose, AVL SmartTraveller Plus, does not support an API for accessing the data at this time.

Raschke writes,

It seems that Montgomery County judged the options mainly on their ability to provide a Web frontend and an SMS interface to real-time passenger information. Regrettably, that's a somewhat backwards way of looking at things.

As far as I am aware, unlike NextBus, SmartTraveller Plus has no API for developers. From what I can tell, if Montgomery County wants an API for real-time data, they're going to have to build directly on top of the OrbCAD database, because it's not going to come from SmartTraveller Plus.

Instead of picking a vendor for their frontend, Raschke says Montgomery should have focused on setting up technology to expose the bus location data, then used a freely available Web and mobile interface like One Bus Away or hired one of the consulting companies that can customize it.

Meanwhile, Ride On riders can start getting their bus predictions, but will have to use separate webpages and apps to transfer between RideOn, Metrobus, and other systems.

The wait for real-time arrival predictions in Montgomery County is finally over. But those hoping to integrate Ride On into multimodal online tools and help more people use Ride On still have to wait for future phases of this long-awaited project.

Just getting to the event was a challenge for those who didn't drive. Veronica Davis, one of the forum's organizers, noted that to get from her home in Fairfax Village to the forum on Minnesota Avenue, she would have had to take two buses, each of which comes only every 30 minutes.

She considered taking one bus to Benning Road Metro and using Capital Bikeshare, but there is no bike sharing station at Benning Road. Instead, she and several others carpooled. Other residents faced similar situations.

Jim Hamre, Director of the Office of Bus Planning at WMATA, presented possible improvements to bus lines serving Ward 7. They would increase connections to downtown and increase frequency of buses during off-peak times. These improvements would cost $8.4 million annually and add 18 buses on 12 routes, the U2, U8, V5, V7, V8, X3, W4, 32, 34, 36, 39, and 97.

Some residents questioned the need for additional buses, saying WMATA should use money for new service to improve existing service first, such as repairing broken fareboxes and making it easier for people to purchase or reload SmarTrips.

Wells also pushed on the idea of priorities, asking whether WMATA should focus on improving access from Ward 7 to downtown, or trips within the ward.

Ward 7 comprises parts of northeast and southeast DC and has a population of over 70,000 residents. There are 55,000 bus trips in Ward 7 on an average weekday, 29,000 on Saturday and 20,000 on Sunday. This translates to approximately 16.9 million bus rides in Ward 7 annually, creating a huge demand for better service.

Many residents of Ward 7 find north-south travel extremely difficult and frequently wait over an hour for a bus to arrive. Others complained about buses that never arrive and about the unreliability of NextBus. These inconveniences ultimately make access to jobs, grocery stores, doctors, schools, friends and family, entertainment and community events extremely difficult.

One resident specifically mentioned the possible arrival of Wal-Mart. The store will create high demand for jobs and shopping, but many residents will find it difficult to get there.

The infrequent off-peak service can also create unsafe situations. Some residents work during off-peak travel hours and must wait for buses early in the morning or late at night. One woman said she felt safer walking the mile from the bus stop to her house than riding some of the buses at night.

In addition to discussing service increases, residents discussed ways to make the bus system easier to use. Wells spoke about adding electronic schedule displays at new bus shelters. A representative from DDOT said it costs the department approximately $10,000 per shelter to install electronic displays.

Others want to see better communication of route detours and improvements to bus scheduling. Hamre said WMATA recently put snow route information online but that the bus operations staff is too small to alert riders to smaller, construction-related route detours or similar delays.

On scheduling, Hamre addressed the difference between running buses on a schedule and on a headway. Currently, buses try to meet the scheduled arrival times at various stops along a route. On a headway system, a manager at either end of a line would send out a new bus on a given interval, such as every ten minutes, as the Circulator does.

WMATA used the headway system on a large scale during President Obama's inauguration in 2009 to much success. It plans to start running this system on the 90s route and, if successful, WMATA may extend this to other routes.

Residents also discussed making SmarTrip cards easier to use. Wells mentioned the possibility of installing SmarTrip machines at bus shelters to allow riders to load their cards before boarding the bus. This could cut down on boarding times, making buses run faster. Currently, 1/3 of weekly SmarTrip additions happen on the bus.

It is also more difficult to load SmarTrip cards at CVS or Giant because there are fewer of these stores east of the river. Though there are several Metro stations, most are in the western part of Ward 7, making the bus the only option for many people to reload cards.

On safety, one mother voiced a concern about overcrowding on some buses. She said her teenage daughter is often pushed against the back door and she's afraid of the doors opening while the bus is moving. Others said they often have to stand beyond the yellow line, which is unsafe for the driver and the passengers.

In response, one man suggested using audio recordings to inform riders about bus capacity. This way, riders would understand if a bus does not make a stop or refuse to let a passenger on the bus. He suggested buses could even have an external indicator when they reach capacity.

The forum also addressed ways to increase Capital Bikeshare usage east of the river. DDOT representatives said they are working with banks to help residents finance their memberships. DDOT also has performance metrics for every trip on Bikeshare and can relocate stations based on demand. Some residents followed up that Ward 7 needs better bike trails and bike lanes, particularly through much of the NPS-owned parkland.

Residents focused most on improving the reliability of current service, improving service to allow for better travel within the ward, and addressing safety issues related to off-peak service and overcrowding. The organizers of the forum are compiling the meeting minutes and resident questions into a report. They will submit this report to Councilmember Wells and make it available for residents online.