Aug 11, 2010

Mission Loc@l Features I School Master's Project "Transporter"

From Mission Loc@l

Open Data and Anxiety Help Transit Apps Thrive

By Rigoberto Hernandez

Ever waited for a Muni bus? Duh. Of course you have, and it’s just that anxiety — a state felt by thousands, according to key findings in Ljuba Miljkovic’s research for his master’s thesis at the UC Berkeley School of Information — that has fueled the creation of Muni apps. That, and the open data needed to make them.

Miljkovic himself created the Transporter, a free app for the iPhone. It tells riders when the next bus will come, shows route lines, and has been downloaded 3,000 times since it launched in May....

Like many of the developers, Miljkovic and Nick O’Neil, who developed Muniverse, created the app because they rode Muni and understood some of the anxiety.

“There [are] a bunch of public transit apps,” Miljkovic said, “I wasn’t particularly in love with them, they didn’t help me with the way I use public transit.”

He wanted an app that told him when the buses arrived at their destinations and displayed nearby stops, he said....

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This story also appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle's Bay Area Transit Blog

Last updated:

October 4, 2016