On October 17th, 2012, I announced on my blog I was starting a new project called Bustimes. Today, after 6 years, I’ve decided to retire it.
In the spring of 2012, I briefly tried out a Windows Phone. I very quickly decided that Windows Phone wasn’t for me. While there was a few things I really liked, like the tile interface that gave more easy access to information, the biggest problem that I found was a lack of basic transit information.
That fall, after having learned a bunch about GTFS from Victoria Rental Map, I decided that the simplest thing that could make that better would be a easy access to upcoming buses. It took a bit of effort to figure out the full specification, loading the data, correlating locations, with upcoming trips.
For the last 6 years, once a month the system would pull down the latest data, update the data, and everything just kept chugging along as usual. This fall, the data changed. The form of some of the stop data didn’t meet what the system was designed to handle. After spending some time looking into it, and looking into what the fix would involve, I decided it wasn’t worth it. I hadn’t personally used the project in years. Revenue never met the expenses. But for me, I’ve been using Android for years.
If you’re looking for an alternative, Google Maps frankly can’t be beat. If you’re on Android or iOS, the apps are top notch. If for some reason you can’t use any of those, I sadly don’t have a good alternative for you. If you know of one, I’d love to hear about it. Drop a comment in the comments below.