They offer open access to this information through an API (see toronto.ca/open). I built something to watch the streetcars on a map using that API: http://totransit.ca/
My coworker and I were talking about letting people "check in" to specific streetcars, and tag variables such as "how full is the streetcar?", but I can't see many (any?) people actually doing that.
The TTC (Toronto) has been pretty good about this, especially lately. Initially releasing real-time APIs for our streetcar routes and now every single bus route has realtime, GPS based methods.
I made this on a weekend back in April. My motivation was to create something I would find useful, and to utilize data provided by Toronto Open Data (http://toronto.ca/open).
The app uses the NextBus API to get live data on streetcar positions. A small PHP script converts the XML to JSON format, but the bulk of the app is Javascript. Thanks to the Google Maps API, the app works nicely on both desktop browsers and mobile.
I find that a map view works well for many different data sets, so I have started an effort to create a generic "on a map" boilerplate. This is a stripped down version of the TO Transit code, and includes the code to make it web app friendly on smartphones. It's still pretty rough, but here's a link: https://github.com/nomatteus/onamap
Boston's MBTA seems to be leading the way with this kind of information, and with making it open to developers. http://mbta.com/rider_tools/apps/ lists dozens of web sites and mobile apps which use data about the MBTA's buses and trains.
The MBTA's bus data (via http://www.nextbus.com, the giant in this industry) tends to be pretty good, though sometimes buses disappear from listings and reappear, and sometimes the predictions aren't very accurate, but they're definitely useful. Subway train data is only fed into the system once a train leaves the end of the line, so there tends not to be data for inbound trains for the first several stops. Commuter rail data is still different, because trains are so much less frequent and people tend to aim to be on a particular train which they know based on its scheduled time.
Other transit agencies are much more closed about their data. For instance, DC's WMATA requires you to sign up for an API key and access all data using their web services, even though their bus data comes from NextBus so you'd think they could let you hit NextBus's web services for their data.
There's also the brand-new GTFS-realtime spec from Google, which is a Protocol Buffer format for getting vehicle positions and so on very efficiently. The idea is that you'd be able to get the current locations of all the vehicles in a large system, like the MBTA, in a single request.
(Shameless plug: one of the MBTA apps listed in the app catalog is my web site http://www.mbtainfo.com)
Transport data for Google Maps is something you have to (and can) lobby your municipal government for. (I'm assuming your transit authorities are under municipal jurisdiction, like the ones in Canada and the US.)
It took us the better part of the last decade, but virtually every transit operator in the Toronto, Ontario, Canada area is now on Google Maps. Not necessarily with real-time GPS, although the transit authorities in more well-to-do municipalities tend to have it.
But you have to work with your neighbours to make it a priority. Whenever they ask for comments (hopefully your municipality is modern enough to ask for this through online forms) then fill it out and ask for them to provide Google Maps data.
(On the other hand, local lawsuits also had a part in it -- a disabled (blind or deaf, I forget which) person sued a local transit authority saying that not having the stops announced was preventing him from using public transit and won. So every transit authority had to have drivers read out every stop until they could install computers with GPS and LCD displays and text-to-speech to read out all the stops. Once the buses and trains all had GPS and computers on-board, adding real-time tracking was just a matter of installing a GSM modem on each vehicle.)
If the buses have GPS then Montreal should launch an app. They did that here where I live and now everyone can see where each bus is, live, on a map of the city. Best thing ever for us control freaks.
Nextbus.com already does this with several public transportation systems, including Boston and San Francisco. I'm actually in the process of putting together a service to alert riders when the bus is about to arrive, based on that data. It's still in beta, it only supports Boston, it's ugly as all hell and probably broken in places, but if anyone wants to look around, it's live here:
I have long dreamed of something like this being available for other localities. This is a great idea, a great implementation, and I hope it will spread.
Anyone want to make one for Toronto streetcars and buses?
There is also Transit, which I have used and liked for about a year now — https://transit.app/
I use it in Seattle and have found it to be very accurate and (most of the time) fast. I have a mildy annoying commute where I often need or want to switch buses and I have to quickly look up if a particular route goes where I am going. Transit has been good for that (in addition to regular point A to point B stuff).
They offer open access to this information through an API (see toronto.ca/open). I built something to watch the streetcars on a map using that API: http://totransit.ca/
My coworker and I were talking about letting people "check in" to specific streetcars, and tag variables such as "how full is the streetcar?", but I can't see many (any?) people actually doing that.
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