NPR Blogger Finds NextBus to Be a Sexy Solution on iPhone

Filed Under Feature Stories, Municipal Transit, Real-time Passenger Information Systems, Success Stories

Bus Information Anywhere Proves Life Changing for DC Area Bus Commuter

In the 3 months since its official launch in the Washington DC metro, the NextBus real-time passenger information solution has proved invaluable for 1000s of busy commuters who have to negotiate the complex local transit system.

Blogger, Eyder Peralta, is an NPR associate producer on social media and has grown to love the NextBus service and the related iPhone application. As he writes in a recent post, Practical Technology Can Be Sexy:

Having used it for more than a month, I haven’t waited for a bus more than three minutes.

It has literally changed my life. It means an extra 10 minutes playing with my baby in the morning. It means finishing off my cup of coffee, when in the past I’d drop it off in the sink completely full. It means that I don’t have to curse under my breath when a bus — 30 minutes delayed — finally arrives with three others right behind it. It means I don’t have to agonize about whether I just missed a bus by a minute so I’m stuck.

Eyder is particularly fond of a DC-specific iPhone application, NextBusDC that provides a rich variety of functions:

The ability to find nearby bus stops instantly
Bookmarking of favorite stops and routes for convenience
Interactive route maps, zoom and click on a stop for bus times
Supports arrival predictions for WMATA buses

Eyder concludes, “Most technology now is about coolness; it’s about ways to entertain your eyes and ears and hardly ever about the simple, practical things in life. But what something like NextBus taught me is that practical tech is the sexiest tech.”

There’s nothing better than technology that makes daily life easier. At NextBus, that’s our objective: To make life easier for transit execs and riders alike. It sure looks like we’ve achieved our objective for Eyder Peralta.

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