Smart Bus Stops Done Dirt Cheap provides passengers with a text messaging service which answers local questions using a specific bus stop ID’s geo-spatial database.

A bus stop should be able to tell you more than just when the next bus is coming, it should be able to answer all of your questions. With simple signs bolted onto the stops, text messaging and a public data API, we’re proposing to make smart bus stops, iteratively and on the cheap.

For the Urban Prototyping festival, we will build a rough draft of a smart bus stop that has access to public data.  We will bolt some signs on in the middle of the night, that will tell people to send a text to a certain number, with the bus stop ID included, as well as their question. Our signage will include an initial set of questions. Our service will look up where that bus stop lives, then answer the question based on that part of the city.

The answers we provide to people is only limited by what data openly available. As the tide of open civic data increases, so does the usefulness of our Smart Stops service. We’ve identified a few to start with though. Transit info through NextMuni, walking directions through Mapquest’s OpenStreetMaps APIs, weather through Wunderground, and events through the city’s events RSS feed. Other potential sources include FourSquare’s locations database, Yelp’s ratings, and Urban Mapping’s wealth of geo-attribute data. In addition, people can add their own API end points to our Smart Stops service.

Project by Anders Finn, Cameron Jefferies, Christy Osorio and Andrew Hyder