DC Area Transit Tool
$30-250 USD
Paid on delivery
WMATA is the transit agency in Washington DC that has just released it's data as an API that allows REST and JSON access with a couple of set methods (Described here: [url removed, login to view]). It provides, among other things, the real time location of each bus currently assigned to a route throughout the region. I would like to create a basic site that can call into this database and store certain kinds of information for finite periods of time in specific locations. This is important for transit planners because we want to know certain things that can only be understood with historic data. For example, three routes operate on one corridor. I would like to have a database that provides the location of any bus on any of those three routes during an afternoon rush hour from Tues-Thurs of a particular week. See the bottom for details.
The methods to get this data are pretty straight forward - so an experienced programmer should be able to work with me to clarify what I'm looking for and then make it happen pretty quickly. There is no need to make a visually friendly UI, just something functional for now. The screen I envision is this:
A listing of all the bus routes and the ability to select up to 10 at a time.
A schedule tool that allows you to pick a recurring data collection appointment (like 6-9am, Tues-Thurs, three weeks)
With these inputs, the software/app will create a database has these fields:
RouteID - Route identifier.
DateTime - Time of last known bus report.
Deviation - Deviation from the schedule (in minutes). Negative deviation denotes delay.
DirectionNum - Direction on the route. 0 or 1.
Lat - Latitude.
Lon - Longitude.
TripHeadsign - Trip headsign.
TripID - Identifier of the Trip.
TripStartTime - Start Time of the trip.
VehicleID - Identifier of the bus.
It will write an entry for every active bus on all the selected routes every two minutes during the time period described.
Thanks for looking!
Project ID: #882120