Arlington has rolled out a suite of real time tracking solutions for ART buses. The tools let riders check up-to-the-minute arrival times based on the actual location of buses.
Among the tracking options for riders are the “RealTime Desktop,” which displays a useful but user-unfriendly map of the bus system, and “RealTime Smartphone,” which can be accessed on a computer as well as on a smartphone and which is actually much easier to use. There will also be RealTime displays at select bus stops throughout the county.
Excluding Metro’s NextBus system, the new ART system the first local real-time bus information service in the region. Beta testing on the system began a few weeks ago.
The technology for the service is provided by New Zealand-based Connexionz.
Arlington Transit has also recently started publishing schedule and route information in an online format that may eventually be used by Google and other web developers.