TCRP report 135 provides a primer on the transit scheduling process. Intended for training those who have to schedule service or manage the process, It is well written and easy to follow. Whether you are a critic, nerd, foamer, or enthusiast, it is a worthwhile read that might illuminate some of the oddities you see in schedules.
Month: January 2015
A rant on platforms
This post on the current trend towards ubiquitous technology in transit.
This is all well and good, but the article only alludes to how long-term successful systems are implemented. There is a history of bad technology design decisions in the industry that either result in monolithic systems that prove unmaintainable and non-expandable. There is also a recent trend by certain vendors to sell an intentionally-crippled system by intentionally unbundling data ownership and the license to re-use it from their standard product, requiring extra payment to own their data. This makes additional applications or analysis more difficult than necessary.
The tech-industry buzzword for a system that avoids this by exposing all of its informationwave of is “platform.” The term was vaulted to legendary status in this essay (http://steverant.pen.io/). A platform is, put simply, accessible by other platforms, modular and extensible, well-documented and well-tested, stable, maintainable, robust, and not redundant. Platforms ensure that the owner of the project not only owns the data, but the interfaces as well.
If you’re in a role to evaluate proposals, ask your vendors: show me the data!