All in Real Time: Providing Accurate and Reliable Information to Transit Customers is of Great Benefit to All Road Users

This article outlines the steps that will be taken to disseminate real-time transit and departure information throughout multiple transit systems in the San Francisco Bay Area. The task, which will be undertaken by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, will ultimately involve more than 26 transit operators and one regional 511 system. The article describes the planning process, the development of system architecture, and the system design. Challenges include the fact that each operator focuses on his specific system, and customer bases can be quite different. In addition, one transit operator already has an exiting real-time system in operation, while other operators are in various stages of development. It is also important, because funding is limited, to balance needs of small, medium, and large transit operators. An important key to ultimate success, according to the author, is the development and approval of a data sharing and storage policy.