While at the Apple Store yesterday evening to scope out the *new* iPhone-–I’m still chapped that I just bought the *old* iPhone four months ago–I noticed a bus schedule Web site on one of the displayed iPhones. I was excited to learn of this great tool for my iPhone, http://www.me2bus.com, which provides Capital Metro bus schedules by route and stop. You navigate to your desired route and bus stop, and the program will tell you when the next bus is supposed to arrive, along with the next three buses after that.
The tool is not an application to install—it’s a Web site that will work on anyone’s portable device. I just checked it on my friend’s Blackberry and it works great, just without the images you will see when using it on the iPhone. It’s an extremely user friendly schedule book on the go!
Looking to the near future, when Capital Metro buses will have intelligent transportation systems (ITS) onboard, webapps like me2bus will be able to include real-time information about when the next bus will be arriving.
CapMetro Blog 
Can you provide an update on the Capital MetroRail? Is it still scheduled to open this Fall? Any idea on the cost to ride or when that cost will be known?
It’s great to see that Cap Metro has ITS planned for the fleet. Otherwise, this seems like it is basically a different interface to the regular old schedule data, which is cool, but no more or less useful than any other way (the go line, the trip finder thingy).
I was excited to see this as a new iPhone owner and semi-frequent bus rider. The current CapMetro website is not the most pleasant to use on a mobile device. Then I realized, the data provided is limited at best.
It skips from bus 101 to bus 201, No 103, 110, 127, 135, 137, 142, 151, 161, 171, 174. Evidentally flyers are 2nd class citizens here.
A lot of routes and stops are missing. Why don’t they open source it so we can all improve it?
type2fool: The data used in iPhone app appears to have been entered from our schedule book data, which lists only timepoints. If there is an interest in developing something more complete, customers can download our complete schedule data (estimated arrival times for all stops), at the following URL:
http://www.capmetro.org/gisdata/gisdata.asp
The data currently available for download is for our current (June) sign-up. We will have service changes in August; that data should be available by the end of August 2008.