Waiting for the Bus Is About to Get Less Bad

OK so the New York City subway is falling apart. Washington, DC’s Metro sometimes catches on fire and had to undergo serious repairs. But fear not, dear rider (OK, maybe fear a little bit). Data—with a little bit of help from Google—could make your commute significantly less excruciating.

Believe it or not, American public transit agencies have been doing something in the last decade or so to better themselves: collecting real-time transit data and making it available to the public. That's the info that helps you figure out when rides will actually show up in a given place. The data has made it possible for over 600 American transit agencies to integrate with Google Maps. This is, of course, very useful to riders in those places, mostly bigger cities.

Now, a hook-up between the search-n’-everything-else giant and the transit technology company TransLoc will make it easier for more agencies to get their hundreds of thousands lines of data into a format Google Maps can read—for free. Behold: The magic of real-time data shall spread throughout the land like so much fairy dust. Because real-time data plays some fascinating psychological tricks on you.

Read Aarian Marshall’s story on Wired - “Waiting for the Bus Is About to Get Less Bad.”