Open data – crowd solving city problems

Just to add a point about open data and connect it to my previous post on MTC. Look at Wikipedia and the like. Lots have been written on crowd sourcing, open source etc.

I have been mentioning this to my few friends in the officialdom. Throw up your data (official data on buses, water, city, etc. that are not official secret) to the world. Chennai is a IT city. There are many young and old, IT savvy citizens who would love to use it to help other or use it to make money, by helping others.

San Francisco like many other cities have their bus data (routes, timing, etc.) on public sites. As expected someone has developed a script and site that shows you all the coffee shops on your bus route. Now that may sound frivolous. But what if the info were hospitals, day care, and host of other more useful info.

(Personally I think coffee shop info is as important as anything else. One of the joys of traveling around a good city is using their excellent public transport system and visiting interesting coffee shops. All this adds to the demand for public transport.)

So I appeal to all officials of Chennai. Put all your organisations data on public sites in usable format.

Confusing bus routes of Chennai – GPS info

My friend Arun Ganesh has done a lot of work on bus routes and setting up websites to make it easier to navigate Chennai in a bus. Check out Chennai volvo routes and timings.

But does bus routes and getting around Chennai have to be this complicated ? On that page you will find the official MTC page. What is amazing is you can find out the timings if you know the route. If you know what 15G or 4E means, then you are safe. Is this how human beings think of traveling around the city. In terms of numbers and alphabets?

Compare with transport for London (tfL) site. They even made it easy for me to add widgets and tool to this post.

I have been meaning to take the A/C bus to various places, especially to Anna Nagar to visit my cousins. I love riding the A/C buses of Chennai when I can find one on time and at the right location when I want it. But I have been so lazy to go and search that I don’t usually bother. I take my car. What a waste!

For a long time my friends Daniel at Chennai City Connect has attempted to get the MTC to take his help in creating a more friendly website. Not only that. Do you know that many MTC buses have GPS in them. This means each of those buses can be tracked realtime. A simple process can display this valuable info on a map like the google transit map.

This opens up a world of possibilities. If the frequency of the buses are very high, say, every 2 to 5 minutes during peak hours, which is what advanced cities would offer, then you don’t have to worry about real time tracking. But that is not the case in Chennai. Especially if you want to ride in an A/C bus. Especially to and from work, during peak hour, so as to not get sweaty and dirty by the time you reach your workplace.

So there is a simple solution. Put the GPS info on google transit or similar mapping systems. This can be viewed on your computer or even on your mobiles. Which means that you don’t have to stand in the bus stop forever waiting for your A/C bus. You step out of the building and walk to the bus stand Just-In-Time. A strong incentive to take the A/C bus, especially during peak hour.

Why doesn’t Chennai already have this? I know the answer, but you ask MTC.

Better ways to travel

I am sure Enrique the singer has millions of fans and fanclubs all
over the world.  I hope to start a Chenai chapter of ‘Enrique the Mayor
fan club’.  How public policy nerdy can one get?  Watch and learn.

Looks like he is also associated with