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The other day we were sent a link to a live website for NextBus, the previously suspended service that tracked where Metrobuses are and when they'll be at different stops. The site looked pretty good— you could enter your location and destination for any bus line and see when the next three buses will show up, or you could look at a live map that showed the location and direction of buses in real time so you could plan your trip.
The site appeared to be working, though it isn't linked from WMATA's site or from the NextBus home page. A NextBus staffer even commented on my blog post about it, saying the site is currently under construction and that "WMATA has just given us the green light to finish the project and release it to the public later this year," he wrote. "In the meantime, feel free to continue using it."
Metro spokesperson Steven Taubenkibel had this to say: "The information you see ... is a test site. We are not ready to go live yet... it will be several more months until we are ready."
And now when you visit the site, you get an error message and a block of code.
The NextBus program was put on hold in the fall of 2007, after Metro announced that software problems were causing customers to receive inaccurate information. Metro has long stated that it intended to bring the program back once those glitches were worked out.
It's too bad the site we saw yesterday is no longer up, but at least we now have some indication of what's coming: a pretty useful site with a live map feature. The image above was taken when the site was working. We're keeping our fingers crossed that it comes back sooner rather than later, and that you'll be able get it on mobile devices, too.
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This really sucks. It may not have been accurate 100% of the time, but it was really damn useful to avoid standing out in the cold wondering whether a late night S bus was actually on the way, or if I should just hop in a cab.
They should have left it up with the caveat that it was a beta.
damn, damn, damn! i told you this was going to happen!
i had been using the site for months, and i knew that if word of it got out, it would be gone.
damnit...
Same here :-(
Hopefully it's just temporarily broken and will be back up soon. I was able to pull up the mobile version on my BlackBerry and check realtime arrivals AT the bus stop. That was pretty awesome.
And speaking of broken Web sites, comments and user profiles on DCist have been REALLY flaky lately. Are you guys aware of the issues?
Same here :-(
Hopefully it's just temporarily broken and will be back up soon. I was able to pull up the mobile version on my BlackBerry and check realtime arrivals AT the bus stop. That was pretty awesome.
And speaking of broken Web sites, comments and user profiles on DCist have been REALLY flaky lately. Are you guys aware of the issues?
damn, damn, damn! i told you this was going to happen!
i had been using the site for months, and i knew that if word of it got out, it would be gone.
damnit...
I guess the NextBus staffer didn't get the message from WMATA that NextBus is supposed to be slowly strangled in the crib. I'm sure that's what happened: WMATA complained to NextBus, and so they took it down. Again.
It's like WMATA is afraid they'll be sued if someone relies on NextBus and is misled. They'd prefer you be misled by their own printed schedules, thank you very much.
Of course it's difficult not to see this in the context of the whole google maps issue, namely that WMATA is afraid to lose control of the information, and "value" therefrom.
Let's just hope this is a temporary crash and that they'll be up again soon.
Otherwise we're coming for your head Wiseman...
Let's hope this is a temporary crash? I'm hoping I get a pony for hannukah but that's not where the smart money is.
WMATA answers to no one. They don't have to. So they sit on their map data and their pooptacular website (Oh look! PDF files!) and their beta technology and the rest of us can piss up a rope. What are you going to do about it? NOT ride the bus? Fine with them. They get paid anyway.
You better pray that when the inevitable econocataclysm comes and that raging wall of manure threatens to decimate DC, WMATA isn't in charge of evacuation. Because they're going to pull a Katrina and park all of their busses in a lot in the middle of the poop zone "for safety reasons" while the rest of the city has to slog through shoulder-high sewage to try and escape. But they'll have NextBus working, by gum! Don't have any busses, but the service will accurately tell you when the bus WOULD have shown up if it wasn't in a parking lot in Cheverly. So as you're roping a bunch of corpses together to use as a raft, just make sure to thank WMATA for keeping you safe from misleading information.
Would be nice if they also put out the live map for rail. Station managers have it, but not the public.
How awesome would a realtime map for the rail be? I might sit and look at that all day.
You might see that site back up sooner than you think. The error message just looks like some developer screwed up (I'm a programmer; I would know). Yes, if the project has a test server and knows how to use it this shouldn't happen on the production server, but who knows how competent these guys are? My bet is that the site goes down and comes back up frequently as they break/fix things.
Yes, the front page of the site gives a 500 server error, but if you go to a specific stop on the mobile site (I've got several bus stops bookmarked on my BlackBerry), there's an actual crafted error page that says "Error: Sorry, but agency tag "wmata" is invalid. Please create a new bookmark."
It looks like the front page just isn't set up handle errors quite so elegantly.
Or they changed the wmata part of the URL to something completely random so we won't have access to it :(
The site has been moved to www.clownpenis.fart
Yes, the front page of the site gives a 500 server error, but if you go to a specific stop on the mobile site (I've got several bus stops bookmarked on my BlackBerry), there's an actual crafted error page that says "Error: Sorry, but agency tag "wmata" is invalid. Please create a new bookmark."
It looks like the front page just isn't set up handle errors quite so elegantly.
is that google maps? so google maps is ok for this and not for train schedule info? bs
foobar: it's a microsoft live map. there was an option to use google maps on that site as well, though, so the hypocrisy is duly noted.
Wiseman you broke it! You fix it!
Call up NextBus and get answers!
Bloggers ruin everything good.
Thanks for blogging about it and getting WMATA to have them shut it down. Now I can stand out at the bus stop and wait and wait and wait.