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YouTubeCOTA riders could get text-message updates on bus ETA
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
Tim Doulin
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Ever stood at a bus stop and wondered where in the world your ride was?
What if you could use your cell phone to text message the Central Ohio Transit Authority and ask?
“This will make trip planning a lot easier,” said William Lhota, COTA president and chief executive officer.
The authority is exploring of using technology that would allow COTA to tell riders when their buses will arrive.
Riders would text message the number of the bus stop and bus route to COTA and the bus authority would send back the number of the next bus and the expected arrival time. COTA tracks its buses using global positioning systems.
“It is that system that we can use on the Web and the cell phone or hand-held devices in the future to provide real-time information,” Keller said.
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COTA riders could get text-message updates on bus ETA
By: Walker
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Does the demographic riding the COTA have access to this technology?
I usually don’t see yuppies waiting at the bus stop.
I ride the bus. And I’m a wanna be yuppie.
So the answer to my question would be a RESOUNDING no.
Try taking the money for technology upgrades and put it into soap and water for those nasty carouses.
Even poor people have cell phones. It’s not like they cost an insane amount of money.
I walk by plenty of COTA stops and see loads of people on thier cell phones. The City Center and High and Long stops really come to mind.
Yeah, I would say that a lot of the riders have cell phones. There is one huge problem with this though. It is the same problem with calling the automated COTA line. You need to know the stop # in order to get the time. On the automated line you can go through a list for the bus route but you couldn’t do that on text messaging. They would need to actually post the stop id#’s on the signs in order for this to be effective.
I don’t really think that this is a very wise way to use the money though. I mean there are a lot of people that ride COTA that have cell phones and probably text msg a lot. However the majority of them will be the downtown crowd and only ride on a few of the main routes. Those are the routes that run pretty frequently. The routes that go out of a way or into residential areas are going to have more riders without access to a cell phone.