Also, Tracker is much easier to understand. It took me lots of head scratching to figure out how to use One Bus Away and I still only have it partly figured out. Finally, by accident, a little white box thing popped up when I dragged the mouse around one of the tiny green dots. But the dots aren’t labeled as to which dot is which bus stop so it was trial and error. It wasn’t the right stop so I clicked on the “look for other stop” thing and it took me to an overview of the Puget Sound area, instead of back to the bus I was looking for. So I hit the back button a few times and after it stood there thinking for a while, it went back to more or less where I was. But this thing is not only slow as molasses but confusing to boot.

The kicker was that I only noticed that it said in “Nbound” in the fine print after I wrote down the schedule time. But I was going southbound. Why can’t it say both of the times, or at least let you (i.e. remind you) to pick which direction first? Or at least say which direction in big black bold type. Which direction it’s going is VERY important! My memory isn’t what it used to be which is one reason I ride the bus. It’s too easy to make “little” mistakes like that without noticing it with this program, or get confused about the different pages. I just find it much easier to use Tracker. Further, I think the people who made Tracker actually thought about things like that, and whoever made One Bus Away didn’t. Tracker is much less confusing and it helps me to be less error prone compared to this. Maybe you don’t sympathize but you’re young yet.

However, in this case I assume real-time information is (or should be) free, just sitting around waiting for someone to use it, as a result of GPS systems and more sophisticated scheduling tools. Considering how long the over-the-road truckers have been using these tools (and more!) my only real question here is why it’s taking so long.

However, I would sympathize with the transit system if they had a nightmare where people complain about buses that are one or two minutes late- because they can. After all, this is a system that makes it appear that every minute counts. Maybe people will be happy to learn exactly how late the bus is, maybe they’ll be angry.

Time for another survey.

In the mornings, if my bus is late, I use that time to clean up a bit of my apartment or make some tea. While not super-productive, it’s better than waiting…

And, using your example, in the afternoon, I check on my bus while at work. If it’s late, I make use of that time to send an email or do a bit of work on one of my tasks. That’s productivity and is an economic benefit.

Finally, don’t you think that there is a correlation between people ‘feel[ing] better’ about using transit and people using more transit? Honestly, I find your argument to be ‘one of the least persuasive’ that I’ve ever heard against real-time information.

Or at least that they will feel better- which is presumably cheaper than giving everyone a pony, but not explicitly stated.

Presumably this is a situation analogous to the automobile, which gets about the same worse mileage than a 1959 Morris Minor, costs ten times as much, but is, I am assured by young people, ever so much better.

And to that judgement I will defer, and even stand in awe of somebody who can fashion anything meaningful out of five minutes of time that would otherwise be wasted. I can do that when I’m at work in my chosen profession, which involves a lot of multi-tasking, but doing it in response to learning the bus will be late- that’s amazing.

We might be able to get some modern large flat panel displays mounted where more than one person can read them too.