24. Organisational Context "Both TAMS and ACTION have confirmed that corporate systems, governance and capability in the business have been somewhat compromised over the past three to four years [since the reorganisation]." [?] ACTION fails to maintain all sorts of private data; keeping records of bus maintenance checks, keeping records of cancelled services, keeping records on accidents, keeping records on complaints, keeping records on failed ticket machines and subsequent lost revenue
28. New patrons know immediately how to change buses in hub-and-spoke system.
29. UniversIty of Washington Seattle case study shows 90%+ of smartphone owners that use trip planners feel more satisfied by public transport, safer, wait less time and take more travels after the launch of mobile app with trip planner! [?]
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31. "Dear Action.act.gov.au. You fail. You fail at everything. You fail as a website, as a bus service... as everything." http://twitter.com/emslibbles/status/37468000114184192
32. "LOL was looking at Action bus site today as car booked for service tomoz. What a state of #1996 Abyssmal in fact."
35. If they were generated rather than marked up by hand, would always be consistent and reflect the "shift cards" aka directions given to bus drivers out of the HASTUS system
36. No more ambiguity about edge case routes like 39 (no last stop on northbourne) or 81 (school holidays only) or Xpresso/Rapid/Limited Stops services
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50. Built own database by drawing on sources like NearMap and OpenStreetMap as well as visiting bus stops and stations
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Editor's Notes
For Google Maps HAS to be on a globally accessible website. So making it open is a political not technical issue
Risks of open data being embarrassing? Being on the radio, 2 evening news programs, local newspapers for being mean to kids is even more embarrassing. Finally after days of media scrutiny, a TAMS spokesperson claims data is bad. But "promise" they'll release Google Transit again by June 2011 So then the politicians get involved. ACT Greens are going to FOI raw data no matter what the current state is and have asked Chief Minister to get advice on "releasing it for use in open source applications.
May seem minor but to a computer the names have to be exactly the same for every route
(a distance of 2.778km as the bird flies in 4 minutes = flying at 40km/h. Reasonable bus route of 3.734km = 56km/h)
Worth noting community identified that one stop was actually used.
OpenStreetMappers already have quite a number of suburbs covered with bus stops at greater accuracy than anything ACTION provides to the public.
Anyway, asside from the doom and gloom of reality. The benefits!
- just as the websites fail at mobile formfactors, they are horrible for screen readers http://wave.webaim.org/report?view=textonly&url=https://www.action.act.gov.au/Routes_101001/Route_6.htm - Don't mean some arbitrary "oh you missed one alt tag". There are real roadblocks to the spirit of accessibility even if some of the WCAG2 priorties are fulfilled. Like no anchor tags on the timetables; hard to navigate on mobile, hard to access generally. Or no “skip to content” to get around the sidebar.
- The "Disability Standards for Accessible Public Transport 2002" even explains that "that the provision of information at bus stops does not mean that material should not be available elsewhere." http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Series/F2005B01059 - The standard for large print is "18 point sans serif characters." - ACTION failed their last accessibly audit in this respect "ACTION did not provide adequate relevant and accessible information including large print options and route maps on bus stops" - Existing timetables could become even more confusing if simply enlarged - Opening this data could easily produce on-demand custom large print timetables - At the high-tech end, there's an area of research into Travel Assistant Devices that can take in GTFS and GPS location to say when to get on/off the bus! http://www.trilliumtransit.com/blog/2009/03/25/metro-magazine-travel-software-to-aid-disabled-riders/
- What if the next generation of mobile devices can do something better? Altered reality glasses? - Even current generation devices; there are many different opinions on the best mobile app, don't lock yourself into Google when you can have the local IT community try. - Or innovating in the field of public transit applications; the realtime transit data innovation is coming more from small agile groups working for one or two agencies than the huge legacy transport network management software makers - Education is ACT largest export; plenty of fresh minds not just in ICT but Management/Commerce that could study different aspects - Data mashups that show best areas to live for public transport or best place for 2 people to meet: http://www.mapnificent.net/perth/
- NSW RTA is "open-ish". Their GTFS is CC-BY 3.0 with "You must not use the Data in any way that could create false or misleading outcomes or interpretations, or bring the RTA into ridicule or disrepute." http://www.data.nsw.gov.au/files/apps4nsw_RTA_bus_arrival_data_licence_CC-BY-NC-ND.PDF
- Manual analysis by auditors already indicates that the stops aren't in the right places - Planning rules say no residential property more than 500m from a bus stop, not always followed - Some newer suburbs have 100m spacing, some older suburbs have 400m. - "Clustering" where the 2 or so routes that service the same suburb aren't spaced out so if you miss one, you've missed the other! - Annecdotal evidence that recent networks favor northside over southside (or vice versa!) Is there any political motivation/influence?
120 routes (Suburban and Intertown Express/"Rapid" services, not School services though) 263 route variants (weekend/saturday/sunday timetable, different directions) 220 timing points (landmarks, intersections, shopping centers, schools/universities) 49 spelling mistakes/duplications 1659 possible stop locations Could be double that in actual stops; one for each side of the road! 102 suburbs, 578 streets 834 point-to-point routes A->B, B->A, B->C on routes X,Y,Z etc. Based on Halifax case - first do it with a bike and a GPS and eventually you'll get the real data!
The last step took the longest to provide instruction for but if real open data came out, it could be merged here and still build on the corrections made.
- As a bonus, it does some validation on the input files eg. routes that go too fast for a bus so the data must be wrong - There are better libraries and platforms out there like OneBusAway but this one is easy to modify and resource cheap at the expense of performance - A lot of customisation about making the right queries for the views I want to present.
- OpenTripPlanner - Has some bonus features; calculates a couple of options, walking stage of travel included in overall route, transfer time/distance considered, preferring less transfers over fastest/shortest route
OTP doesn't have a geocoder yet, use the Cloudmade/OSM one Format turn directions into maps and words Access bus stops/routes/streets/suburbs
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