Our Work

The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) is pursuing a number of strategies to enhance the user experience for making informed transportation choices in the City of Seattle. Many of these strategies focus on upstream data inputs and open source application programming interface (API) feeds. SDOT seeks to pursue front-end features with the widely popular open-source OneBusAway transit app. The goal is to enhance the customer experience for all Seattle transit users.

SDOT believes that in addition to transportation service improvements such as increased frequency of buses and trains, they can increase ridership and customer experience for Seattle-area transit users by funding improvements to existing communication and discovery platforms. The OneBusAway apps are used by over 360,000 riders in the Seattle area and provide a rich set of real-time information and trip planning tools for customers in the region.

OneBusAway consists of an integrated suite of open-source transit traveler information tools. On the user-facing end, these consist of apps for iOS and Android, web and SMS interfaces, and software to drive public transit data displays. This is backed by a range of software for servers, transit data preparation, system monitoring, alert handling, etc. The server space for Puget Sound is provided by Sound Transit, which in turn aggregates bulk transit data from King County Metro and other agencies. OneBusAway is by far the largest open-source system of its kind. Originally developed at the University of Washington, the project is now administered by a Board of Directors, elected by the project members at the annual meeting each year.

Creation of a feature roadmap for iOS and Android features within the OBA application including but not limited to the following: bug fixes, customer support, accessibility features, service alerts and in-app messaging. The project team also undertook a user experience refresh to modernize and simplify the core OneBusAway application and help users more quickly and enjoyably find the information they need.

Three new features promoted in this release:

1. The Map Table: an easy way to see all of the transit stops around you.
2. Agency Alerts: a simple way for your transit agency to share breaking news for your commute.
3. Siri Shortcuts: a quick way to access your most-used transit stops. Siri works with OneBusAway to learn your favorite transit stops in order to recommend them from the lock and search screens automatically.

By continuing to support this application and develop new features, SDOT can better serve customer needs for all users, including those users with accessibility needs.

This project is a partnership between the Paul G Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, the Mobility Innovation Center at the University of Washington, and the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT).

• Computer Science & Engineering

• Alan Borning
• Aaron Brethorst
• Sean Barbeau