What is Track My Bus?
Track My Bus is an online service that provides (close to) real time locations for all the buses on the Island, information on all the routes and accessible timetables.
Track My Bus map
Below is a screenshot of the Track My Bus map. Each coloured arrow shows the live location of a bus.
Live bus information
Tapping on an arrow gives you live bus journey information.
Why we need Track My Bus
In early 2008 we launched Text My Bus, an SMS bus times enquiry service, which is costly to maintain.
Mobile technology has progressed since we launched Text My Bus. Track My Bus provides similar information, but is both interactive and responsive.
Benefits of Track My Bus
The benefits of Track My Bus are that it:
- allows the user see where the buses are, in real time, on a map
- saves money by lowering the use of Text My Bus
- encourages more people to use the bus
- increases revenue which can be invested in public transport and information services
Challenges we faced
We initially planned to create a mobile app.
We quickly realised that this process would not be cost effective. Every change would need to be rewritten and tested in each mobile operating system. This process would be too slow, labour-intensive and expensive. It would also exclude users who want to view the bus locations on their PC, Mac or laptop.
The team decided to make a mobile website which works across all platforms and enables faster development and deployment than an app. This allows us to respond to customer feedback more efficiently.
What’s next?
We regularly review the customer feedback sent to webteam@gov.je and we prioritise the comments for future releases of Track My Bus.
Since the initial release, we have released a phase two based on customer feedback. In July 2017 we made further enhacements:
- We added the listings for Liberation Station departures and airport bus stop departures
- We made the arrows more pointy
- We made the bus stops easier to click on so you can see when the next bus is coming
We have also made the source code of the system available as Open Source at https://github.com/StatesOfJersey/bustracker so that other developers can help improve the system.
Business owner
Craig Miller, Public Transport Planner, Department for Infrastructure
Email Craig Miller
Project management team
Kathryn Porter (Information Services Department)
Craig Miller (Department for Infrastructure)
Sponsor
Jonathan Williams - Programme Director eGov
gov.je