Well, I don’t know. Sommer wrote a great review of the newly-released Nextbus iPhone app. I went ahead and bought it, and you know what? It’s worth three bucks. I’m not sure I can or should undercut the effort. Besides, one of their developers showed up in comments and stated that they’re willing to work with developers via their (not publicly disclosed) API. I’ve been emailing back and forth with him, and it’s clear that they’re willing to let people use their data if they enter into royalty agreements.
So I can either duplicate functionality (but try to do things slightly better — unlikely, given my lack of iPhone development experience) or I could try to anonymously release a free, quick-hit application that undercuts Nextbus’s slightly dodgy inclination to charge Metro, then turn around and charge the people who fund Metro. But doing that would certainly violate the license surrounding their data, and they’d get the app pulled and/or break whatever interface I cook up.
At the moment I’m leaning toward collecting data over a set period of time, then analyzing how badly Metro does at arriving at each stop on time. But doing that would require matching GTFS stops to Nextbus stops, which isn’t easy.
So tell me, Nextbus-iPhone-app-users: is there anything you wish the app did that it doesn’t? Or should I content myself with the above-proposed navel-gazing?
Tom, what is this GTFS layer you are referring to? Is this the same as the stop point layer published by the city? On-time data would be amazing, maybe I can help figure out these GIS problems.
Hey Rob — yup, I mean the data published by the city. It doesn’t match up very well with the Nextbus info. I’ll send you some additional info over email.