So, this is useful.
TravAlert Wakes You Up Before Your Bus Or Train Reaches Your Stop
If you’ve ever commuted to work by public transportation, you’re familiar with the problem.
You doze off easily because that’s what we all do in automotive vehicles from the earliest age, and you either sleep past your stop and have to double back or you wake up at every stop.
Been there, done that.
TravAlert uses your smartphone’s GPS and your personal settings to prevent you from oversleeping.
I love problem-solving with technology.
I’d like an app that tells me where the bus or train actually is. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/apr/11/texts-can-tell-you-when-next-bus-really-will-arriv/ just strikes me as likely to be as bad as Amtrak Julie, the liar.
I don’t have a problem sleeping through stops, I’m way too paranoid and they have loud announcements on my trains. The Metrolink I sometimes take homeward ends at my stop anyways, the conductor has funny bits like “… and if you see the person next to you sleeping, just poke ’em, pound ’em, push ’em, or just plain pester ’em to wake up.” At times a whole train car will say it with him.
So what do we do when new technology jams all the gps? http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_generic.jsp?channel=awst&id=news/awst/2011/04/11/AW_04_11_2011_p26-307552.xml&headline=null&prev=10
Trimet, here in Portland, does provide exact locations for their buses. I think they provide an API to consume that information too. Pretty cool apps have come out of that.