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Copyright © 1999 The Seattle Times Company
Local News : Friday, July 30, 1999
Tired of waiting? Check Web for progress of bus
by Roberto Sanchez
Seattle Times staff reporter
So, where is that darned bus?
That question just got easier to answer thanks to Daniel Dailey, an
associate professor of electrical engineering at the University of
Washington.
Dailey has written computer software that allows bus riders to know more
accurately when their bus will arrive at a stop so they can better plan
their trips.
The program, called MyBus, tracks buses on routes that include any of
four stops - the UW's Husky Union Building, University Way and Northeast
45th Street, Kingsgate Park & Ride and the Boeing transit center in
Renton.
The pilot program is possible because each King County Metro bus has a
radio transmitter that automatically tells its home base where a bus is
along its route. MyBus then estimates the time the bus will arrive at
any stop.
It displays the information on a Web page at
http://www.its.washington.edu/mybus/ in the same style as schedule
monitors at airports. Users need a browser capable of handling Java
applets, such as Netscape 4.06 or Internet Explorer 4.01, to make the
program work.
Dailey said he got interested in traffic through his research on random
events. He noticed that the behavior of individual vehicles in traffic
is very similar to that of other random systems, like bubbles in a
nuclear reactor.
Dailey also had a personal reason. He rides his bicycle to work, but his
wife rides the bus.
"Why have her standing downtown like a dork in the rain when she can
check it in her office and catch (the bus)?" he said.
MyBus is part of an $13.7 million effort, call Smart Trek, to better
manage traffic in the Puget Sound area. The partners in the project
include the King County Department of Transportation, the Federal
Highway Administration, the cities of Bellevue and Seattle and private
companies such as Boeing and Microsoft.
Smart Trek uses Web pages, traffic cameras and highway-pavement sensors
to give users accurate and updated information on traffic.
MyBus is related to another bus-monitoring system already in place,
called BusView, also designed by Dailey. That program tracks the
progress of buses in King County, displaying updated schedules and
active maps on the Web at
http://busview.its.washington.edu/busview_launch.html
Another program, called TransitWatch, displays updated arrival times at
monitors in transit centers at Northgate, in Bellevue and at Boeing in
Renton.
Tom Friedman, a senior planner for Metro, said there's no way of knowing
right now if those programs are putting more people on buses. Battelle
Seattle Research Center is expected to finish in the next month a survey
to see if they have made a difference in riding habits.
Friedman acknowledged that the computer programs don't make the buses
run faster, but he said they help make the transit experience better for
riders, which is an important part of smarter traffic planning.
"Some people won't ride the bus because they don't know when it's
coming," he said. "This takes some of the uncertainty out of that.
Theoretically, it makes them more comfortable in riding the bus."
Roberto Sanchez's phone message number is 206-464-8522.
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