This is a smart use of crowdsourcing. From the app you can know the number of people who are waiting for the bus and relying on your reporting. Kind of gives you a sense of community. I hope this takes off.
Right. Their little smiley telling me that nine people are being helped by my activating their app kept me longer at the stop than otherwise. The bus was four minutes off their prediction, though.
What does it take to add real-time data for a new city?
I've been interested in trying to scrape the data from the transit provider here. They have what appears to be reasonably accurate arrival predictions which they display through an atrocious app, and electronic signboards at some bus stops. The busses have a terminal for the driver that displays how long they need to dwell at times stops and announces the next stop, so I assume this is (at an unknown interval) transmitting the locations to their server.
I haven't gone further in looking at it yet, because google maps will only add data sources directly from the official transit provider.
I live in a major city of ~800K with one of the lowest public transit ridership in the US, and I've learned to not quite trust their time predictions. We do luckily have GPS location data, and I regularly just look at the bus' actual position to gauge time most of the time.
Dang, I'm interested to know why you shadowban some accounts (obviously without warning, or else it wouldn't be a shadownban) and yet give others advance warning in a very public way.
Reminds me of the Devil Tree (Triplaris americana) found in South America[1]. Anything that touches its bark (bird, insect, human) is ferociously attacked by colonies of venom squirting red ants.
Learned about this fascinating tree in the equally fascinating book "1491" by Charles Mann[2].
Your comment makes me think that the Latin speaking world likes to attribute bad plants to the devil.
There's a drug that Colombians call the Devil's Breath[1]. Which is believed to be scopolamine[2], which had previously been used as truth-serum. The rumors go that the drug makes you "zombified" and compliant, willing to do whatever is suggested to you. It's my understanding that the drug is extracted from belladonna[3] though it's hard to know what is actually true about the rumors. Vice has a video about it[4], though I haven't had the opportunity to watch it yet.
Was more offering a counterpoint for the OP than trying to get argumentative. :) I found his life fascinating, not least as it's very much one that would be too remarkable for the biopic!
I see a part list here: https://transitapp.com/region and more cities listed here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.thetransit...