Hey there transit enthusiasts, it’s been quite the ride this summer in Raleigh, NC, as the Go Raleigh transit agency decided to change things up in the real-time bus tracking game. They swapped out their trusty old TransLoc system for Clever Device’s BusTime. As a result, the Go Raleigh riders had to endure a brief hiatus in their real-time bus tracking experience.
But, guess what? I’m back in the driver’s seat, and after some serious detective work, I’m thrilled to announce that BusTime is now officially in the family of supported backends for the Go Transit App’s impressive Montclair system! 🎉
BusTime isn’t just any newcomer; it’s a proven player in the transit world, trusted by major agencies like the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA). In fact, my testing took me on a virtual tour of the Windy City, where CTA’s buses roll with the power of BusTime.
What’s even more exciting? This integration with BusTime paves the way for future expansion, potentially bringing our stellar transit tracking to even more cities down the road!
Now, let’s get technical. While Clever Device’s website may hide some of BusTime’s API details, fear not! CTA comes to the rescue with an excellent Developer Page offering access to API Keys and comprehensive API Documentation.
But wait, there’s more! Every feature you’ve come to rely on with Go Transit is fully supported through the BusTime API. This is especially good news for the residents of Raleigh, as it happens to be the city with the highest ridership.
As of the latest update, the Open Source software that powers Go Transit (Montclair) now boasts support for a diverse range of backends, ensuring a smooth ride:
Availtec
BusTime
GTFS-RT (Beta)
RouteShout
RouteShout v2
Transloc
Transloc v3
This comprehensive coverage guarantees that you’ll never miss your next bus, no matter which backend you prefer. So, whether you’re a loyal Go Raleigh rider or a transit aficionado eager to explore the wonders of BusTime, we’re here to meet your transit needs.
Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to enhance your transit experience. Thank you for your patience and loyalty – we look forward to serving you better than ever before! 🌟🚌🌟
Ah, the sweet siren call of new music! If there’s one thing I’m always on the prowl for, it’s fresh tunes to tickle my eardrums. I’m practically the Bandcamp connoisseur, the aficionado of audio, if you will. My collection’s like a treasure trove of musical gems, all handpicked from the vast Bandcamp galaxy. But there’s a twist to this tale – my wishlist isn’t just a shopping list; it’s a roadmap to musical exploration.
Picture this: thousands of albums languishing in my wishlist, each one a potential masterpiece. It’s a labyrinth of sound, and in my quest for auditory bliss, I’ve encountered a conundrum. How do I keep track of what I’ve listened to and what piqued my interest? You see, I’m not just a ‘skip and forget’ kind of listener. Even if an album doesn’t quite hit the mark, it lingers on my wishlist, a musical enigma begging to be solved. But here’s the kicker – without notes, it’s like trying to recall the lyrics of a song from a dream. Frustrating, right?
So, in the spirit of ‘necessity is the mother of invention,’ I decided to craft a digital companion to my Bandcamp odyssey. Behold, Camp Counselor! This nifty tool syncs your Bandcamp wishlist and purchase history into a cozy database, giving you the power to annotate, star, and sort your albums with reckless abandon.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Why not just leave a public review on Bandcamp?” Well, my friend, sometimes the musical journey is a private affair, a secret rendezvous between you and your headphones. That’s where Camp Counselor shines. It’s your personal backstage pass to the music world. You can leave your thoughts, ratings, and quirks in blissful secrecy.
Now, here’s the cherry on top – I wanted to break the mold, to venture into new territories. This wasn’t just about crafting a web app; it was about exploring uncharted sonic realms. So, Camp Counselor is tailored for my trusty Pinephone, my loyal companion on my musical journeys. I built it with Vala and Gtk4 for Linux, complete with a slick and responsive design. As for Mac and Windows users, well, I haven’t given it a whirl, and truth be told, I’m dancing to a different beat.
But wait, there’s more! In the future, I might just sprinkle some more magic into Camp Counselor:
Imagine the sheer delight of previewing albums right within the app, eliminating the need to hop between tabs.
Ever wish you could magically add new albums from artists you adore to your wishlist? Well, I’m conjuring up just that.
Who knows? Camp Counselor might just evolve to embrace the vast world of musical data beyond Bandcamp.
So there you have it, folks – Camp Counselor, your trusty sidekick in the realm of Bandcamp. It’s time to dive into the sonic sea, navigate the waves of melodies, and rediscover your musical journey, one note at a time. Happy listening! 🎵🎉
Max Transit has recently released their plans for upcoming changes to Birmingham, AL’s transit system that will go into effect in mid to late May. The plan primarily consists of two parts:
Using the new BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) stations as hubs to begin moving away from the central hub and spoke model that has been out of date for decades.
Using “On-Demand” service for areas of low ridership.
Why is this happening?
There appears to be three major reasons for these changes.
First, Birmingham’s transit system has used a hub and spoke model for 60+ years. The original assumption was that every one from the edges of Birmingham would all want to come to Central Station. With changes in population, this is no longer an accurate representation of how riders want to utilize public transportation.
Several other hub and spoke transportation systems in other cities in the US have already or are planning to reconfigure their system into a grid like system. A grid system has several advantages, including higher frequency, multiple paths to your destination, and better coverage. However, it comes with a potential downside of needing to transfer rather than having a direct route. Transferring is really only an issue if the frequency of buses is poor.
With the completion of the East-West BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) system last year, Birmingham now has several stations or hubs that can be utilized. This is allowing Max to begin to reconfigure their system into a more grid like system and utilize the BRT as the backbone of the system.
In my opinion, this is the correct direction to be heading in, and I am excited about realignments that focus on connecting with the BRT.
Second, as seems to always be the case in Birmingham, Max is severely underfunded. This means trying to use what little resources they have as efficiently as possible. Unfortunately, this means removing duplication and eliminating areas of low usage, so you can allocate more resources to areas of high demand.
Third, there is a nation wide shortage of bus operators, mechanics, and other related workers. During the meeting, Director Charlotte Shaw said that there is a 80k-100k shortage of public transit workers nationally. At Max, there is currently a lack of bus operators. Max has 30% fewer operators than they need to operate the system! This means drivers are working overtime and/or trips on routes have to be canceled daily. In fact, if you subscribe to Max’s alert system, you will get messages like those below throughout the day of trips being canceled, likely because of a lack of operators.
Bus operators must have a CDL (commercial drivers license), and finding operators to hire has been difficult for Max since COVID.
One advantage of the On Demand service, is that the vehicle is a standard Minivan and does not require a CDL, which means it is easier to find operators.
Route Realignments
First, let’s look at routes that are being modified to use the BRT stations as hubs:
17 – Eastwood
This is a map of the current route 17 (Green) and the BRT (Purple). Currently, the 17 meets up with the BRT at the east Woodlawn station, but continues to central station downtown on the 3rd/4th Ave S/US 78 corridor.
The upcoming changes have the 17 terminating at the BRT east Woodlawn station. Riders that want to continue downtown must now transfer to the BRT.
The Route 17 is significantly shorter and eliminates duplication. Based upon the proposed timetable, it is a 35 minute loop with a 10 minute buffer at the Woodlawn transit center. This allows the transit agency to run a single bus and have 45 minute frequency, whereas previously, frequency was at best 55 minutes. With the updated route, the bus will run the route 21 times vs currently only running 19 times.
Riders will have to transfer to the BRT, and depending upon that transfer time, the time to central station should be roughly equal, as the BRT is an express bus, rather than a local.
The biggest effect is that the 17 no longer provides service down US 78 (3rd/4th Av S). To compensate for this, the 25 will be realigned to no longer duplicate the BRT down 1st Av N, but instead take US 78.
Route 25 – Center Point
This is a map of the current route 25 (Red) and the BRT (Purple).
With the re-alignment, the Route 25 will still meet the BRT at the east Woodlawn Station, but will then follow the previous Route 17 down US 78 to Central Station.
The Route 25 currently has two buses service it in the morning and evening with 45 minute frequency, but only a single bus during midday with 1 hour and 30 minute frequency. According to the modified schedule, the Route 25 will now have 2 buses servicing it throughout the entire day, giving it a constant 45 minute frequency and 6 extra trips a day.
This is a good thing for Center Point residents, however, overall this is a loss for some of the current riders of the 17. Most notable, the 25 does NOT run on the weekends, which means any riders that previous used the 17 between Central Station and Woodlawn will no longer have Saturday Service.
Route 48 – South Powderly
Several years ago, during some major cuts, the Route 8 was eliminated and the Route 48 was realigned to combine the 8 and 48. Frequency was also cut back. This is a map of the current Route 48 (Red) and BRT (Purple).
As you can see, there is quite a bit of overlap between downtown Central Station and the BRT. With the re-alignment, the 48 will no longer go to Central Station, and instead will use the 6th Av S / Goldwire BRT station has a hub. The rest of the route will remain the same.
According to the proposed timetable, the Route 48 will now have a frequency of 1 hour, instead of 1 hour 25 minutes.
Route 7 – Fairfield
This is a new route that utilizes the BRT’s West Crossplex Transit Station as a hub and services Fairfield and connects with the Route 5 – Ensley/Wylam/Fairfield.
At this point, the route is somewhat limited, as it only runs on weekdays with a frequency of 1 hour. It also only runs in the morning (6am – 9am) and in the afternoons (3.30pm-6.30pm). The route also has a 10 minute buffer at the Crossplex Transit Station to help with connections to the BRT.
On Demand Changes / Route Eliminations
For those not familiar, the city of Birmingham entered a partnership with Via several years ago to provide On Demand micro transit. This allows riders to use an App similar to Uber/Lyft to schedule a pickup. A 5 person van picks up riders along the same route and drops them off.
However, this is not a door to door private service like Uber/Lyft. You are typically asked to walk around 1-2 blocks to a specific corner/side of the street. This is to help optimize the route, so the vehicle isn’t pulling U-turns or changing directions. It is possible that you will get the van to yourself, but if there are other requests along the same path, those riders may be picked up or dropped off along the way.
Originally, this was paid for and managed by the City of Birmingham. Recently, the city of Birmingham has been working in partnership with Max Transit to promote the service as a unified solution to transit. This is a step in the right direction, but eventually, Max Transit should be the owner of this rather than the city of Birmingham.
With constant budget cuts comes more route eliminations. The changes presented eliminateRoute 12 – Highland Park, Route 18 – Fountain Heights, and Route 43 – Birmingham Zoo.
Route 12, Route 18, and Route 43 will all be eliminated!
These neighborhoods will no longer be services by _any_ fixed route bus service. Instead, Max is proposing extending the zone of the Birmingham On-Demand Service to include these areas.
In my opinion, this is a huge loss for these neighborhoods. Highland Park is the original street car neighborhood in Birmingham, and was designed around the #12 street car. Several years ago, when there were major route cuts due to funding, Highland Park lost the #44 and was left with only the #12. The #12 was re-routed to attempt to cover parts of both the #12 and #44, but instead, it ended up ruining the route costing ridership.
While I am not against On Demand Micro Transit, I have concerns about how it is currently being implemented. Micro Transit is not a replacement for fixed route service. Nor should Micro Transit be a way to bypass fixed route service.
If you look at many of the fixed route bus lines, you can see that they are rarely straight. Instead, they meander all over the place to pickup a few riders here or service this business over there. When there are budget cuts, routes get combined causing them to cover even more areas.
What this does is slow down the bus routes and leave us with long run times and poor frequency, making a frustrating experience. What should be a 15 minute bus ride, becomes 35 minutes due to it not being direct.
Micro Transit can help with this problem. It allows the transit agency to realign and straighten the route. The bus route no longer has to go out of its way, into a low density neighborhood, to possibly pick up 1 or 2 passengers. On Demand Micro-Transit can instead, pick up those 1 or 2 passengers and bring them to the bus stop. It solves a critical first-mile/last-mile issue, especially for those who can’t or won’t walk longer distances or ride a bicycle.
This can give everyone a better experience. The bus is quicker. The bus has better frequency. And most importantly, we don’t leave any riders behind.
Unfortunately, this is not how Birmingham’s On-Demand Micro Transit is currently being implemented. Even though it is now a “partnership” with Max, it is still a separate service, with a separate fare, and no ability to transfer between fixed route services or on-demand.
Using it as a replacement or an excuse to replace fixed route service is not a good solution. I really hope in the future, the implementation of micro transit is changed to require either the pick up location or destination be a transit station, and I sincerely hope Max considers bringing back fixed route service in both Highland Park and Fountain Heights.
Questions Left Unanswered
The public meeting about these changes left several questions unanswered. If I learn any more details about these questions, I will update this page.
Payment Systems + Transfers?
The Fixed Route Buses, the BRT, and On Demand all have different payment/fare systems and are not compatible with each other. This brings up a major issue for riders of the 17, 7, and 48, as they are now expected to transfer from fixed route to the BRT.
However, at this time, it is not possible to use your Fixed Route Fare which could be a single ride ticket, daily ticket, or monthly ticket on the BRT. You have to purchase a separate BRT fare card. This means that a trip from Eastwood to downtown now essentially costs $3.00 instead of $1.50!
Max leadership indicated that they are currently looking into unifying the system between Fixed Route and the BRT, but it is not clear if will be available by Mid May when these changes take effect.
Because the On Demand Micro Transit is paid for by City of Birmingham instead of Max and is operated by Via, there are no plans currently to integrate fares or transfers between it and the Fixed Route or BRT systems.
Updated On Demand Coverage Areas?
Currently, the On Demand service has limited coverage areas and does not currently include Highland Park. It stops just short at St. Vincent’s Hospital.
Max Leadership indicated that the On Demand coverage area would be expanded to include Highland Park, but there has been no confirmation of this at this time.
The material says “Via Daytime zone covers a good percentage of this local fixed route”. However, that is not true, as it only covers from St. Vincent’s Hospital to downtown, nothing in the actual Highland Park neighborhood. The online map still shows coverage of Highland Park lacking:
With the changes to the 17, many people between South Side and Woodlawn will now have to utilize the 25. However, the 25 doesn’t run on Saturday. Unfortunately, it does not appear that On Demand coverage will be expanded for this area either, leaving all these residents without any weekend service.
On Demand Hours?
Currently, On Demand doesn’t begin until 6am. Both the 12 and the 18 began service at 5.30am. Some riders were concerned they would no longer be able to make their connections at Central Station.
No Rider Left Behind?
Leadership did take each riders concerns very seriously and are looking to make this transition as easy as possible. To that extent, they are running a few month program during the transition called “No Rider Left Behind”. Any users affected by these route changes will be able to call a support number and have a van pick them up.
I love music. I like to closely track bands and labels to learn about upcoming releases. Unfortunately, the type of music I listen to tends to stay more underground, so there isn’t any mainstream coverage of it, which just means I get to do all the work myself.
Fortunately, a majority of the bands and labels I am interested in are on bandcamp. Bandcamp makes it pretty easy to subscribe to artists and labels and get updates from them directly. Unfortunately, this all comes through email. While it is easy enough to filter to avoid cluttering my inbox, email isn’t my desired place for this information.
I run a private freshrss instance and curate several hundred RSS feeds. It syncs nicely between my various devices, and is just a great way to consume. My goal is to get all my music updates from bandcamp here, so that’d they be in the same place as where I get music reviews and follow some other underground music blogs.
Bandcamp doesn’t provide any rss feeds. There are some options, like using RSSHub and its bandcamp addon. However, many of the updates that come through email are private, and don’t show up in an artists’ or labels’ feed.
I decided, I’d go a different route, and just convert the emails I was getting into an RSS feed directly.
Step 1 – imapfilter
I already use imapfilter heavily for filtering and tagging my emails. I decided I could use it to pipe the bandcamp emails to a custom script that would convert it into an rss entry. Here is the relevant section:
function filter_bandcamp(messages)
-- Grab anything from Bandcamp where the subject
-- starts with "New". This indicates a message
-- or updated rather than a receipt.
-- I am taking these "mailing list" bandcamps
-- messages and converting them to an rss feed.
results = messages:contain_from('noreply@bandcamp.com') *
messages:contain_subject('New')
for _, mesg in ipairs(results) do
mbox, uid = table.unpack(mesg)
text = mbox[uid]:fetch_message()
pipe_to('/opt/email2rss/email2rss', text)
end
-- delete the bandcamp messages
results:delete_messages()
return messages;
end
You’ll notice I don’t want all messages from “noreply@bandcamp.com”, since that would also include things like purchases and system notifications.
Step 2 – email2rss script
The email2rss script is a python program. I am using feedgen to generate the feed, and built in python libraries to parse the emails.
One issue you’ll notice immediately, is that this script runs once for every email message. For RSS, we want to create a continuous feed with all the entries. This means we have to insert the new entry into an existing file and have some persistence. The quickest/dirtiest method was to use python’s builtin pickle to serialize and deserialize the whole state. That way, I can quickly load the previous state, create a new entry, write out the rss file, then serialize and save the state to disk.
Here is the program in its entirety:
#!/usr/bin/env python3
#
import sys
import email.parser
import datetime
import pickle
import re
import os
from feedgen.feed import FeedGenerator
DATADIR=os.path.join('/', 'opt', 'email2rss', 'data')
def default_feed():
fg = FeedGenerator()
fg.id('https://feeds.line72.net/')
fg.title('Bandcamp Updates')
fg.description('Bandcamp Updates')
fg.link(href = 'https://feeds.line72.net')
fg.language('en')
return fg
def get_feedgenerator():
try:
with open(os.path.join(DATADIR, 'feed.obj'), 'rb') as f:
return pickle.load(f)
except IOError:
return default_feed()
def save_feedgenerator(fg):
with open(os.path.join(DATADIR, 'feed.obj'), 'wb') as f:
pickle.dump(fg, f)
def add_item(fg, msg, content):
msg_id_header = msg.get('Message-ID')
msg_id = re.match(r'^\<(.*?)@.*$', msg_id_header).group(1)
sender = msg.get('From')
subject = msg.get('Subject')
fe = fg.add_entry()
fe.id(f'https://feeds.line72.net/{msg_id}')
fe.title(subject)
fe.author(name = 'Bandcamp', email = 'noreply@bandcamp.com')
fe.pubDate(datetime.datetime.utcnow().astimezone())
fe.description(subject)
fe.content(content, type = 'CDATA')
def go():
fg = get_feedgenerator()
parser = email.parser.Parser()
msg = parser.parse(sys.stdin)
for part in msg.walk():
if part.get_content_type() == 'text/html':
add_item(fg, msg, part.get_payload())
break
fg.rss_file(os.path.join(DATADIR, 'feed.rss'), pretty = True)
save_feedgenerator(fg)
if __name__ == '__main__':
go()
Step 3 – Host the Feed
I just have a simple nginx server running that hosts the feed.rss. Then I simply add this new feed to my freshrss instance.
Future Work
There are still some improvements that could be made to this. The history is going to grow out of control at some point, so I really should probably go through and delete old entries, maybe to keep a history of 100 or 500 entries.
The other possible issue (I haven’t run into it yet), is that the email2rss could be run simultaneously. If that is the case, then one entry will likely be lost. I really should probably have a lock around the feed.obj to keep a second instance from doing anything until the first was written out the new state.
I recently purchased a Pinebook Pro, which is a Linux laptop based on the Arm processor. It is a great travel laptop, and surprisingly, I have found this to now be my primary personal device.
Everything has worked well, except one annoying bug: after resuming from sleep, the audio stops working. After digging around, I found that a simple command to write some data to the device to unbind it, then rebind it resolves it. I incorporated this into a systemd script that it is automatically run upon resume.
Create a new file called: /usr/lib/systemd/system-sleep/audio with the following (sudo vim /usr/lib/systemd/system-sleep/audio)
#!/bin/sh
#
# mwd - 20200726
# This is a script to reload the audio module
# upon resume.
case $1 in
post|resume)
tee /sys/bus/i2c/drivers/es8316/{un,}bind <<< 1-0011
;;
esac
I just released version 1.6.1 of Montclair for all the Go Transit cities. This includes a minor visual change of a new icon for the bus.
Previously, I was using Availtec’s Icon Factory, which lets you specify a color and heading, and it generates a .png image of that color with an arrow indicating the direction the bus is going. It has worked well, and looks nice enough, but I don’t like depending upon a 3rd party service, especially for cities that don’t use Availtec.
After some deliberation, I decided I wanted to do everything client side. I would have a single SVG icon that the client would load in javascript and would manipulate the stroke/fill colors and rotate the arrow to the heading. This works quite well, and the result is a nice clear image that we only have to load once!
This code works by loading the SVG through the DOMParser, then modifying attributes, reserializing it, then returning it as a data: url that is base64 encoded.
// load the svg
let xml = new DOMParser().parseFromString(svg.data, 'image/svg+xml');
// update the attributes //
// 1. the gradient
// stop1
let stop1 = xml.querySelector('#stop958');
stop1.style.stopColor = '#' + this.color;
...
// 5. The bearing, set its rotation
let bearing = xml.querySelector('#bearing');
bearing.setAttribute('transform', `rotate(${this.heading}, 250, 190)`);
// 6. Serialize and generate a data url with base64 encoded data
let serialized = new XMLSerializer().serializeToString(xml);
const url = 'data:image/svg+xml;base64,' + btoa(serialized);
I have released a new version of the Montclair software, 1.6.0, that includes some major improvements to seeing estimated arrivals of buses at stops.
When selecting a stop, the app now goes into a full screen split mode with the estimated arrivals and the map. Clicking on one of the estimated arrivals will show you where that specific bus relative to your stop and will track the bus until it arrives. This makes seeing your next bus super simple!
This version will automatically roll out to your favorite “Go Transit” city app!
I have added support for Tuscaloosa, Alabama’s transit system as part of my Go Transit series of apps. You can view Go Tuscaloosa in your browser or install it in the Apple or Google app stores.
I have added two more cities to the Go Transit Apps series, Go Memphis and Go Nashville. Both are available through the web, or in the Android Play Store and Apple App Store.
