I sat next to CATS' honcho Olaf Kinard at the Monday city council dinner meeting and he showed me a new mobile phone app that CATS has worked up, with a local company Myjive Inc. It's called iCatch LYNX. It shows you the closest Lynx (light rail) station, and when the next train is arriving.
It's free. Just do an app search for iCatch LYNX and you'll find it. Works on iPhone and Blackberries, he says. Phase II will work on Androids.
Kinard, who's the director of marketing and communications, says they'll have an app for buses, starting in about a month. Good. The Lynx schedule is easy to remember, and except in the early mornings on weekends, the trains are never more than 20 minutes apart. Buses are way more complicated, and sometimes if you miss one you'll be waiting 50 minutes or more for the next one. Or all weekend, since some routes simply don't operate on weekends.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
iCatch the Light Rail
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5 comments:
Great news about the bus schedules!
As I wrote CATS directly, the iphone app is all well and good but what about an android app?
Most people I know have either blackberries or an android!
Now this is good use of resources. I'll be sure to download the bus schedule app to my Blackberry when it comes out. And I will happily recommend it to the poor fools who I see at the bus stop who just walk up to the stop expecting other riders to tell them what time it is, what bus they need to catch and when it is coming.
Mark - Mary said that this app will be available on Androids in the second phase. They probably started developing this app before Androids became so popular.
I would LOVE to have the bus schedule (with live-time updates) on my android. I would definitely ride buses more often.
Heard this on NPR tonight, about GPS apps in other cities.
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/05/27/pm-gps-data-may-pay-off-for-city-bus-riders/
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