PATRICK-MURRAY ADMINISTRATION ANNOUNCES REAL-TIME BUS TRACKING

Boston, MA - As part of the Patrick-Murray Administration's commitment to building a more customer-friendly transportation system, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) and the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) announced that MBTA riders on five of the T's busiest bus lines can now track the locations of their buses in real-time on the MBTA website, MBTA.com. In November, the MBTA released a Real-Time XML Trial Feed for the same five lines that resulted in the creation of at least 8 customer-friendly mobile phone or web-based applications at no cost to the MBTA.

The new MBTA.com service, dubbed "T-Tracker," includes real-time location and arrival prediction information for bus route 39, which serves Jamaica Plain, the Longwood Medical Area and Back Bay in Boston; and bus routes 111, 114, 116 and 117, which serve Haymarket Station, East Boston, Chelsea and Revere.

Within just one hour of releasing the trial feed at a November Developers Conference at MIT, a developer had built an application to display the location of the buses on Google Earth. The eight third-party applications that have been created to date operate on numerous platforms, including from a touch-tone phone or SMS, basic websites, desktop widgets, the iPhone, Android devices and even an LED sign.

"These third-party applications and our Developers Page represent a new business model for MassDOT and the MBTA: releasing public data and allowing software developers and citizens to improve customer service at no cost to taxpayers," said MassDOT Secretary and CEO Jeffrey Mullan.

The real-time information and T-Tracker website is being provided as part of an MBTA pilot project. At the conclusion of this pilot program for the five bus lines, the MBTA will determine the best way to make the real-time information available for more bus routes.

MassDOT also announced that it will participate in a Hackathon at the Center for Future Civic Media at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Friday, January 29th and Saturday, January 30th. MassDOT and the MBTA will be partnering with MIT students and others to build applications, websites and physical signs that help riders access the MBTA system.

The November MassDOT Developers Conference and challenge built on MassDOT's historic step toward openness and transparency through creation of the MassDOT Developers Page in the summer of 2009. The Developers Page serves as a resource to innovative software developers interested in building applications with MassDOT's data. Additional data sets exist for transit and highway information. To see some of the applications built with MassDOT Developers page data, visit www.massdotdevelopersconference09.com.

More information on the Conference and the Challenge can be found at the MassDOTDevelopers Page: www.mass.gov/eot/developers.

For the latest information about Massachusetts transportation, visit the MassDOT blog at www.mass.gov/blog/transportation or follow MassDOT on twitter at http://twitter.com/massdot.

Connect with the MassDOT Developers on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/MassDOTdev.