If you ride MARTA buses regularly, I’m slowly trying to get a UX put together that’s usable at https://martalith.fly.dev. Things like:

  • “I get on the same buses every day (at 2-3 stops) and just want to see my bus situation clearly/quickly”
  • “I transfer at X station regularly and want to know the status of Y/Z routes for that station”

I’ve tried to build this in the past, and the bus data either confused me or didn’t seem usable. But MARTA recently added realtime bus positions + trip update endpoints, and early tests are looking more positive! When I can find an excuse to ride buses, I’m testing things out, but it’s slow-going.

I try to remember to put updates here when things change https://fosstodon.org/@jakswa

  • jakswa@yall.theatl.socialOPEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    I forgot to list out the current situation briefly:

    • The landing page is a list of all MARTA routes, and their trips. The trips are grouped by destination/headsign.
      • basic html/css, gzipped. trying to be load-able on slow connections because it’s a lot of text/data
      • this page is static, gotta magically know to reload to get updates rn
    • You can click the route name to go to a rough “route summary” page showing vehicles + future trips seen in marta’s endpoint
      • this page is static, gotta magically know to reload to get updates rn
    • From both pages, there are links to the individual trips which puts you on a barebones trip tracker that just updates a vehicle’s position every 30s right now on a map. There are edge cases where trip isn’t track-able, haven’t hammered them out yet.