yPass.net

It’s been a long time since I last looked at GTFS. Since then, I’ve gotten tons of emails and comments on the blog post about my failed little yTransit project. A Google engineer in the Czech Republic working on their transit team even contacted me, but still nothing from actual transit companies.

However, it’s been a little while and I think there may be a glimmer of hope for this project yet. I’m guessing (hoping) that since smartphones have become increasingly popular, more people in the industry are getting a bit more interested in the technology. I called the Summit County, Colorado transit system (Summit Stage Transit) this morning and talked to the dispatcher.

I told him that I was interested in getting their transit schedule into Google Maps and he didn’t just say “uuhhhh… what?” He actually said “I think we’d be very interested in that.” He told me the person I needed to speak with wasn’t in the office at that moment, but he’ll be in later today and that I should leave a voicemail.

Now remember, I had originally contacted Summit Stage Transit way back in 2009 and they weren’t interested and didn’t return my calls. So at least this time around, I actually got a favorable response. That is huge progress!

We’ll see if this goes anywhere, but if they’re able to help me get some requirements built, I might actually be able to make this happen.

So officially, the project is still dead pending resuscitation by John at Summit Stage Transit who is supposed to return my call this afternoon.

Update: I spoke with John and I have a meeting scheduled for the July 20th to discuss their needs and requirements. This thing might happen after all.

eric GTFS, Google APIs GTFS