Skip to main content

“King County, Wash.’s Open Data Turned Into Real-Time Bus Tracking App”

UW CSE Ph.D. student Brian Ferris saw the need for better public transit information. So in his spare time, he wrote code that’s now used for OneBusAway — an open source application that aggregates bus data in real time.

King County officials hope others will also take advantage of their raw data to build useful apps, like Ferris did, and plan to make hundreds of additional data sources available.

Ferris is now studying how his app has changed transportation behavior as part of his Ph.D. work.  “OneBusAway users are more satisfied with public transit, spend less time waiting, take transit more frequently and feel safer at bus stops,” he said. “People actually reported walking more.”

Read the full article in Government Technology here.