transit – Marcus Dillavou

Go Raleigh + BusTime: Elevating Your Transit Experience 🚌🚀

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! 🌟🚌🌟

New Bus Icons in Go Transit App

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);

Here’s the result:

Go Transit App Updates

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!

Go Tuscaloosa

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.

Download QR-Code

‎Go Tuscaloosa

Developer: Marcus Dillavou

Price: Free

For a full list of cities and features, see the Go Transit App website.

Go Memphis and Go Nashville

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.

Go Memphis

Download QR-Code

‎Go Memphis

Developer: Marcus Dillavou

Price: Free

Download QR-Code

Go Memphis

Developer: line72

Price: Free

Go Nashville

Download QR-Code

‎Go Nashville

Developer: Marcus Dillavou

Price: Free

Download QR-Code

Go Nashville

Developer: line72

Price: Free

For a full list of cities and features, see the Go Transit App website.

Go Huntsville on the News

Download QR-Code

Go Montgomery, AL

Developer: line72

Price: Free

You can also find all of these in the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store.

For a full list of cities and features, see the Go Transit App website.

See Stops and Arrival Estimates in Go Transit Apps

I have been making several improvements to the montclair code base, which is the software that powers all the Go Transit apps.

Go Transit now shows the stops of the selected route — See the stops for the Highland #12

First, for the selected routes, you can now see where all the stops are. This helps people who are unfamiliar with the system know where to pick up a bus that is near by.

See the arrival times of buses for the selected stop — Stop Arrival Times

Selecting a stop on the map will show you the estimated arrival time of buses for that stop! This is a live view that is continuously updated as the arrival estimates change.

If multiple buses use this stop, view all their arrival times — Arrival Times of a Stop with Multiple Buses

If multiple buses go through the same stop, then the app will show the arrival estimates for all the buses. This is especially useful in cases where routes overlap and you have multiple options.

All of these changes have already been pushed out, and any apps you have should automatically update!

Announcing the Go Transit Apps

During a recent visit to Steamboat Springs, Colorado, I quickly became frustrated with the app for the free bus system. I thought to myself that it would be really nice to have my Montclair app available for other cities. With that, the Go Transit series of apps were born.

I started off building out github actions for the montclair, montclair-pwa-android, and montclair-pwa-ios projects. The github actions will automatically generate a compiled build when the repository is tagged.

The next step was to build a transmogrifier. The transmogrifier takes a configuration, then pulls down a specific version of montclair, montclair-pwa-android, and montclair-pwa-ios, and replaces all the necessary names, strings, icons, and other information. The new versions are then pushed to their own repositories and tagged, which automatically kicks off the white labeled builds.

All that is left it to create a custom configuration (see Steamboat for an example). The assets projects all have github actions too, and each time a commit is pushed, it will then run the transmogrifier.

When all the builds are done, they can be uploaded to my website hosting provider, the Google Play Store, and the Apple App Store.

So far I have created white label builds for:

Go Birmingham, AL

Download QR-Code

‎Go Birmingham

Developer: Marcus Dillavou

Price: Free

Download QR-Code

Go Birmingham

Developer: line72

Price: Free

Go Mobile, AL

Download QR-Code

‎Go Mobile, AL

Developer: Marcus Dillavou

Price: Free

Download QR-Code

Go Mobile

Developer: line72

Price: Free

Go Steamboat Springs, CO

Download QR-Code

‎Go Steamboat

Developer: Marcus Dillavou

Price: Free

Download QR-Code

Go Steamboat

Developer: line72

Price: Free

Go Indianapolis, IN

Download QR-Code

‎Go Indianapolis

Developer: Marcus Dillavou

Price: Free

Download QR-Code

Go Indianapolis

Developer: line72

Price: Free

Go Raleigh, NC

Download QR-Code

‎Go Raleigh

Developer: Marcus Dillavou

Price: Free

Download QR-Code

Go Raleigh

Developer: line72

Price: Free

For more information, see the Go Transit App website.

Validating Availtec’s Bus Arrival Estimates

In my last post, I created a dashboard that shows the estimated arrival time of buses at specific stops. After using it, I was curious to see how accurate those estimates are.

So I have created a new project:

availtec-estimate-validation

As always, everything is opensource and available on my github page.

This project consists of two parts:

A capture script that queries Availtec’s API every 30 seconds for the estimated arrival time and stores them in a local database
A graph script that generates pretty visualizations from the captured data.

Here is an example of the Route 44 Inbound at St. Vincents Hospital for Birmingham, AL’s transit system.

Each “block” is a bus trip throughout the day. The dark black line represents the actual time the bus arrived at this stop. The dark blue line shows when Availtec estimated the bus would arrive at that specific time.

Ideally, the dark blue line would be as close as possible to the dark black line.

From the image above, we can see that the 4th trip, from 10:44:17 to 10:46:17 had the best estimate. From 10:00am to 10:50am, Availtec estimated the bus would arrive Â±30 seconds from when it actually did.

We can also see that the trip after it, had the worst estimate. From the time the trip started, just before 10:50, until around 11:20, Availtec was estimating the bus would arrive at 11:32, when it actually came at 11:38. It wasn’t until about 11:25, that the system suddenly corrected and started estimating a more realistic time.

This project works with any bus system that utilizes Availtec for real time tracking. You can leave the capturer program running in the background for days, then generate graphs based on that historical data. The graphing script allows you to specify which stops, routes, and days to plot.