A few months ago, I did a short interview for the Engadget Show on the state of real-time bus information here in NYC. The interview was for a video segment which led into a live interview with the reporter I worked with, Rick Karr. The whole episode is now available online. Before our section is an interview with Nicholas Negroponte, talking about OLPC and visions for the future.
35 min into the show is our part. We’re standing right outside of Penn Station, checking out the real-time bus information that’s available now on 34th Street via dynamic signage. We talk a bit about the current state of real-time on NYC buses and the challenges that the MTA has faced getting real-time implemented thus far. In the live interview, Rick mentioned some of the work we’ve been doing at The Open Planning Project, including the iPhone-based OpenBusTracker experiment we did last summer, and our general belief that real-time can be implemented for less than you’d expect using commodity hardware and open source software.
Of course, it’s tough to watch yourself on video, and it’s even tougher to hear your own edited answers. Note to self: work on snappier soundbites! But it was really fun doing the interview, and great to get the real-time transit discussion out there to a wider audience.
