TechFlash contributor Roni Ayalla reports on recent developments with UW CSE graduate student Brian Ferris‘ OneBusAway project. The open-source project now has a home at Google Code, is seeking grant funding, and has attracted faculty sponsorship from UW CSE’s Alan Borning, one of the principal investigators on the cross-disciplinary Urbansim Project. Ferris is quoted

We’re working on building a complete open-source transit traveler information system that would combine route maps/timetables, trip-planning, real-time tracking, and real-time service alerts … into a user-friendly package that would be accessible across the web, phone, Twitter, whatever. Basically, (OneBusAway) to the next level.

We’ve reported on press coverage of OneBusAway several times.

[Update 4 March: follow OneBusAway on twitter here. -SMR]
[Update 7 March: OneBusAway was covered on WorldChanging Seattle. -SMR]

Metro bus service could be cut by as much as 20 percent.  With this prospect looming, Seattle NPR affiliate KUOW’s program The Conversation recently spoke with  CSE grad student Brian Ferris about his bus-tracking tool, OneBusAway.  The segment appears around minute 40.

Earlier coverage on OneBusAway may be viewed here.

KOMO News reports on One Bus Away in this February 12 broadcast television story, Where’s that bus?!? Sweat no more. One Bus Away is a web site and a collection of bus-locating services created and run by UW CSE grad student Brian Ferris. It allows transit users in King County to track the buses they are interested in five different ways, most available from a cellphone (voice, text, or web). You can view the broadcast video segment on demand at the site.

We previously covered One Bus Away here.

[One Bus Away was also the subject of a February 11 radio news story by Tom Tangney on KIRO-FM, Riding the bus just got easier. You can listen to the audio on demand at the site. On the same day, Fox Television affiliate Q13 looked at One Bus Away in Real-time bus schedules-- on your cell phone!]

“It’s a question heard at countless bus stops:  ‘Have you seen the number 48 go by?’”

After spending countless rainy nights waiting for his bus to go by, Brian Ferris, a UW CSE grad student, decided to do something about it.  Over the past year, he created a tool, OneBusAway, that allows King County bus riders to use a cell phone, iPhone, or computer to keep tabs on their bus.  OneBusAway’s website averages 1,000 hits a day, and the system has processed over 20,000 automated calls since June.  Ferris programs the site in his spare time and is gradually adding more features.  For Ferris, he says this project fits with his philosophy of using technology to support social causes, and it’s a chance to create something that people like to use.

Read the University Week article here.