A Port Authority sign at The Waterfront in Homestead lets bus riders know they can use their cell phones to find out which buses are scheduled to arrive within the next hour and the scheduled arrival times. By Matthew Santoni
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, February 5, 2009
The Port Authority of Allegheny County has paired with a Carnegie Mellon University spin-off company to test a service that sends bus schedules by text message, with the hope of decreasing customer service calls from people wondering when a bus will arrive at their stop.
The service, known as "RouteShout," is being tested at 22 stops across Pittsburgh, mostly in areas frequented by college students.
Riders use cell phones to send a text message to RouteShout containing a unique code printed on orange signs beneath the bus stop signs. They get a reply showing buses scheduled to arrive at that stop within the next hour and the scheduled arrival times, said Nathan Martin, CEO of deeplocal, the CMU spin-off based in East Liberty that is developing RouteShout.
he service isn't available at enough bus stops to make a dent in the number of callers asking about "the next bus," but could have an effect if expanded, said Port Authority CEO Stephen Bland. Among about 3,000 calls a day in January, requests for schedules were most common, he said.
"They definitely need to expand it, because it's always been a concern of mine to be calling (Port Authority) late at night," said Macy Lucas, 19, of Highland Park, as she waited for a bus at Community College of Allegheny County's North Side campus. A frequent caller to check arrival times, Lucas said she dislikes waiting on hold with the Port Authority at peak times or late at night.
Martin said users steadily increased since the service quietly debuted in December. There were about 4,500 requests for schedules since then, and about 2,200 first-time users, he said. The most popular stop was in front of the Target store at The Waterfront in Homestead.
"Considering we haven't even mentioned it publicly, I'd say that's pretty good," Bland said.
Money for the project came from the Sprout Fund, a Garfield-based nonprofit. The only cost to the Port Authority has been creating and installing the orange signs, Bland said.
Port Authority officials could use the service to inform riders about route changes, special events and detours, depending how often they update the schedules fed to deeplocal, Martin said. After testing the service in Pittsburgh, he hopes to market it to other small- and medium-sized transit agencies.
Another application could use Global Positioning Systems available on some buses to estimate when they would arrive at a stop, not just when they are scheduled, Martin said. But that level of service would require Port Authority to invest more in centralized GPS tracking, and predicting arrival times can be inexact, he said.
"We can predict the bus will arrive in 15 minutes, so you'll go to get a coffee," Martin said. "Then, when the bus arrives in 12 minutes, you'll see it speed past and you'll be right back to calling customer service."
Users are encouraged to go to routeshout.com and give feedback on the service, Martin said.
