#An app that tells your friends your eta driver#

Your transit agency usually has reliable data about where its vehicles are right now. Can your bus make up that seven-minute differential? Or will that вЂњseven minutesвЂќ turn into a ten-minute delay? Trains have to wait for other trains.ДЄnd when an app says your bus is running вЂњseven minutes behind scheduleвЂќвЂЉ-вЂЉitвЂ™s actually understating the complexity of the situation. Public transit has a certain degree of baked-in uncertainty. Until now, public transit apps (and signs) all had one source for their departure times: the transit agency.

#An app that tells your friends your eta driver#

Could you foresee the blocked intersection? The hockey game that went into overtime, holding up the buses? The hailstorm? The stroller fiesta that required the driver to use the ramp at ten different stops? Neither could your transit agency. But itвЂ™s not your transit agencyвЂ™s fault.Д®ven though transit agencies are the ones supplying predictions to apps like Google Maps and Transit, вЂњpredictingвЂќ ETAs isnвЂ™t a brainless game of point and shoot - extrapolating from where your bus is, and adding x-minutes.

The sense of betrayal - the rottweiler fury - that results from a bad transit ETA is something weвЂ™ve all experienced. Yet mid-walk, youвЂ™ve caught sight of something strange, out there in the distance: your bus? sailing off into the horizon? without you on board? вЂњThatвЂ™s just perfect,вЂќ you say.

No matter which app you use to look up the times for public transit - at one point youвЂ™ve headed to the stop, happy as a two-tailed corgi, with plenty of time to spare before the next departure.