Mobile transport

Student engineers invent mobile phone bus tracking service.

A pair of student engineers from the University of Washington (UW) in the US have invented a mobile phone application that can track the progress of a bus so you can see how long you have to wait at a stop.

The pair, Brian Ferris, a UW doctoral student in computer science and Kari Watkins, a UW doctoral student in civil and environmental engineering, came up with the solution having spent too much time waiting at bus stops in the cold.

The system, called OneBusAway, lets bus passengers in King County use their phone or computer to follow the progress of their bus. Since last June the service has processed 20,000 calls.

Speaking to the University of Washington website, Ferris said: "I'm an avid bus rider. If you ride the bus enough, you spend a lot of time waiting, because even on the best of days buses can still run late”.

Currently maintained during Ferris’ spare time, he is actively seeking help with the project: “I'm kind of running this on a shoestring and a prayer. I've had people offer to buy me a beer, anything they can do to help. Now that it's becoming popular, a lot of people are becoming dependent on it" he said.

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