Mother Fool's Introduces Madison Metro Real-Time Bus Information

Madison coffee shop Mother Fool's announces an experimental effort to offer real-time bus information to our customers.

Our new Bus Monitor uses GPS info from Metro's website to estimate arrivals at the Jenny & Ingersoll stop. The display is located by our back (bus) door and tracks the next 5 buses coming each direction. It shows how many minutes until arrival based on Madison Metro GPS data.

This is the first stage of this project. We will be duplicating the display in one of our front windows so this information can be easily utilized by the general public. Also, we will be making a web widget that will allow anyone to customize the app for any bus stop and bus routes they wish to monitor. We expect to implement these steps by early summer.

Our hope is that this effort will be duplicated by businesses on or near bus routes around the city as a simple means to make using the bus as simple as possible. In our case, this will allow our customers to make informed choices about whether to get coffee "for here" or "to go," how many cookies to buy, do they have that extra minute to chat with an old friend who just walked in… etc.

This system was conceived and designed by Greg Tracy (smsmybus.com) and Preston Austin.

Here is a link to a blog post by Greg Tracy that describes his role in creating the gateway that powers this. (includes photo of display.)

http://www.gregtracy.com/when-pet-projects-grow-up-and-become-somethin

Special thanks to The City of Madison for great buses and for providing the GPS data that enable this service.

We look forward to improving on the basic idea and are asking users to report back about the accuracy of the data.