User:PaulJWR/sandbox

= OneBusAway (App) = OneBusAway is an open-source mobile application designed to provide users information about buses such as routes and schedules.

History
OneBusAway was started in 2008 by University of Washington students Kari Watkins and Brian Ferris as a graduate student project. Watkins and Ferris' PhD dissertations focused on the effect of technology on the public transportation, specifically that of OneBusAway. The original intent of the project was to improve mass transportation around the Puget Sound area by providing real-time information to commuters, and thereby allowing research that "examines the impacts of real-time traveler information on the attitudes and behaviors of transit customers".

In 2008, OneBusAway, with the help of Sound Transit, was first deployed in Puget Sound, WA, and has 100,000 daily active users. In the early stages of development, there were many issues keeping up with changes in the Puget Sound transportation network due to holiday service changes, snow, etc. Over the next few years, as cell phones became more ubiquitous, OneBusAway became more popular, garnering attention from KOMO, Seattle Post-Intelligencier, and other local newspapers.

In 2010, Ferris and David Emory, a programmer for OneBusAway, partnered with the Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District of Oregon to create OpenTripPlanner, a similar app to OneBusAway that serves Greater Portland

Ferris and Emory were honored by top American IT officials at the White House on June 10th, 2010 for their open-source development of OneBusAway and OpenTripPlanner.

In June 14th, 2011, Ferris announced that he would be moving to Zurich to work for Google Transit, and that he had graduated with his PhD. This news placed the future of OneBusAway in uncertainty, but Ferris wrote on his blog:"In the meantime, we're not pulling the plug on OneBusAway the day I graduate. OneBusAway is NOT 'abandoning Seattle'. I'm doing everything in my power to make sure the lights stay on and while I can't say exactly what that will look like at this time, know that there are a number of options on the table and I'm confident we'll find a solution going forward.""As I've said before, working on OneBusAway has been an incredibly rewarding experience and it wouldn't be possible without the thousands of OneBusAway users like you. If you're anything like me, I know OneBusAway is a critical part of your daily commute (I don't even know how to get get home when OneBusAway is down). I'm doing everything I can in the future to keep building tools that help make using public transit a little easier for riders like you. While I can't promise exactly what that future will look like, all that I can ask is that you judge me by the work I've done as I pursue the work I hope to do."With 50,000 daily users and financial support from Nokia Research and the National Science Foundation, Ferris helped the UW Computer Science and Engineering Department keep OneBusAway running on UW's servers. However, bugs popped up in October 2011, when King County Metro conducted major restructuring due to the Alaskan Way Viaduct project . Ferris continued to work on the app until UW found a solution.

As an open source application, OneBusAway relies on a community the provision of data relating to public transport by government agencies, such as Sound Transit in the Puget Sound Area and the MTA in New York.