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The excellent Michael Perkins at Greater Greater Washington reports from yesterday's D.C. Council oversight hearing for WMATA, and hears Metro General Manager John Catoe promise that the transit agency will finally release its schedule and routing information by March 23. The statement comes several months after Metro first suggested that working with Google Transit was not in their best interest and that they would only pursue such a relationship if it made them money.
This is huge news for all the interweb and transportation geeks who have been sounding the open sharing of data battle cry since December. The pressure placed on Metro to join the growing list of other transit agencies already making their data available to Google appears to have paid off. And as Perkins notes, it won't only be Google Transit that will be able to take advantage of Metro's decision:
This is even better than just doing a deal with Google, because anyone will be able to use the data. Actually, Catoe didn't give any updates on a specific deal with Google. Other agencies have signed specific deals. Metro might still do that, but it looks likely they might not at all.We can think of at least one person on our staff who is likely to take advantage. No formal announcement of this policy has yet to come out of the WMATA shop, so we'll be sure to update when more details become available.How great is that? Metro figured out a compromise position based on feedback from you, the riders. Perhaps they didn't feel that partnering with Google on Google's terms would work for them, so they decided instead to just give the data away and let anyone use it.
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sommer: might want to upgrade the old metro map there. still has ny av. and the blue line extension under construction...
Sweet jeezy man, do you ever give your pedantry a rest? I grabbed a nearby image that was meant to be merely decorative, and that's the first thing you jump on for this post? Might want to look into some meditation or something. Live and let go, my friend.
What you need is one of those "DO NOT PEDANT HERE" signs on your wall, that'll stop him. I've got some leftover stick-on letters from my urine sign if you want them.
"Pedant" isn't a verb. Maybe the wall should read "PEDANTRY STRICTLY PROSCRIBED WITHIN THE VICINITY OF THIS TEXT" instead? Although you might need to define "vicinity", to be safe.
They were reffing the photo in yesterday's end of day post...
Yes, I picked up on that, but pedants, unlike public micturators, can't be deterred by anything less than perfect grammar and/or a sharp blow to the head. I should know; I'm a charter member of Pedants Anonymous in between brief periods of cranial trauma.
Whatever you do, in god's name, never post a mercator projection map. Those things drive him ape$h!t. He just won't shut the hell up about how distorted Antarctica is.
Yeah and the next thing you know, IMGOPH, will say something like, hey, it's Istanbul and not Constantinople. Well buddy, I got the proof right here and you are going down sir!
thanks, everyone, for not piling on too much. i get it, i nitpick too much. i promised sommer i'd try to keep it in check.
i love you guys. seriously.
the NY Ave metro station doesnt actually exist. go find it.
How about a "PENDANTRY FREE ZONE" shaved panda pendant? It'd be kinda like a Saint Christopher medal except disgusting. It's times like this I wish his evil twin "IMGorph" were still around. At least he kept his pendantophilia to hisself.
Slow news day. Isn't it about time for a Shemp Mathis (no relation) adult diaper shoplifting arrest story?
Nice map. How's everybody doing today?
What exactly is this scheduling data? Will they be making real-time arrival and departure data available, or is this little more than timetables? If it's the latter, that data could have been pulled from the WMATA site by other means. The trip planner app uses this data, and I'd imagine it wouldn't be hard for someone clever enough to get it all that way.