Traveling by transit is rarely an A to B journey. You have stops in between. Maybe you need to grab a coffee or hop on bikeshare to complete your trip. But your trip planner can’t account for that. At least not yet.
Sara Cantor and George Aye of Chicago-based Greater Good Studio have an idea for a transit app that will take into account various aspects of your trip. Here’s their vision:
Or if videos aren’t your thing, here’s a description from the TED Blog:
They are currently designing a transportation app that will not only remind users of line closures, but will show them where to pick up a coffee along their route or remind them to bring an umbrella if rain is in the forecast. The app they envision could design a route to avoid staircases for someone with an injured ankle, or tell a user if they should take the crowded bus in front of them or wait a few minutes for a bus with a seat. The app will be created through crowdsourcing, with self-designated “Urban Agents” feeding data into the application to make it work.
Creating an app this powerful caught the attention of TED in the form of a $10,000 grant to help jumpstart the app’s development. If you’ll remember, last December TED announced that its $100,000 prize was going to the City 2.0, an idea rather than a person. As part of that TED broke up the cash into 10 smaller grants of $10,000 each. The transit idea is one of those. TED has given out seven grants so far and will announce three more later this year.
