by namibj | 2026-02-27 10:40:50+00:00
We should push the typically publicly funded (and via that path: the big single entity that pays you the largest (single) share of your income as a transit company gets to dictate a LOT if they try and it's inherently close to free) to literally just publish the real time traffic information as open data for at most a fee (if getting directly from the source, not any aggregator/CDN) equal to AWS's bandwidth charges for the traffic itself.
With a license that allows others to just offer caching proxy access with no stipulations other than maybe some reasonable amounts of attribution. Because sadly many places routing with no schedule awareness increases "typical" journey times by >50% for a decent chunk of the ridership base.

On that note, I should see how open data my municipal utility's EU-forced-outcrop of a "mobility" branch handles it's real time data, because I did notice (from ads in the busses at the doors where they put what are essentially D2C "press note"s) about a year or two ago that they started offering a mobile browser usable (without giving any permissions to the site, at least above default android Chrome) live position tracker for their bus fleet.

Could be useful to do some predictive modeling on it together with the schedule to enable streaming commands to one's earbuds (if one's just listening to music while on the way) about haste (/lack thereof)/catching a different station.

Like even just telling me if I catch the bus at the closer station when leaving home or if I should walk to the other branch line which is about a minute further to walk (and that entire minute is uphill) but has the bus scheduled to depart 3 minutes later.
They connect shortly after at a transfer/crossover where the routes alternate between physically crossing and merely briefly meeting up at the same "named stop" with just two driveways separating the nominal positions at the sidewalk the busses park alongside to open their doors.

I don't have the mind to check that real-time position map for the duration of the shared walking path between home and the "fork in the road" where I have to choose between the two bus stops, while analyzing the moment on the map to identify if it's getting held up in traffic (shorter) or actually stopping at the stop it'd have to be at (AFAIK pretty much exactly) for me to not need to run (but only walk with purpose on my mind) to still catch it at the closer station.
That's particularly relevant because leaving on time with margin for retying shoelaces or stuffing mail in a backpack and aim for the father station makes me catch the closer station exactly once it's a little bit delayed (on the order of 60~90 seconds).

I'd probably want it so I tap the phone to one out of a couple NFC tags in the hallway that tell my device what kind of thing I'm about to do; be that leaving for shortly or for longer (latter case it can also cut the heating until I give it an ETA of when I'll be back; due to good insulation the savings of less thermal flux due to less temperature Delta between inside and outside are not worth having to remember to give it an ETA to have it back up to temperature before I arrive).