TextMyBusMIA

What's the purpose of this?

TBA

Demo-ing the prototype

• SMS in the Twilio test phone number: (786) 629-6468
• SMS should be in the format: "BUS [ROUTE SHORT NAME] AT [STOP LOCATION ID]"
• For example: "BUS 101 AT 2884" (The 101/A route at 17th St & Meridian Ave, Miami Beach, FL)

Finding out stop location IDs (for internal use mostly)

• SMS in the Twilio test phone number: (786) 629-6468
• SMS in format: "STOP AT [INTERSECTION ADDRESS, CITY, STATE]" will return a list of stops near that intersection along with the calculated direction of the street they're on
• Example: "STOP AT 17 ST & MEDIRIAN AVE, MIAMI BEACH, FL" returns #2884 Eastbound.
• SMS in format: "STOP [LOCATION ID]" will return a Google Maps link centered on the coordinates of the location ID
• Example: "STOP 2884" will return https://maps.google.com/maps?q=25.792236,-80.136955&num=1&t=m&z=19
• You may also browse to http://smsbus.illogicalsystems.com/locate-stops.html?phrase=17+st+%26+meridian+ave%2C+miami+beach%2C+fl and play with the search box.

How to set this up

• Create a web server, basic LAMP stack (Requires PHP 5.3 and above)
• Clone the repo
• Download composer (package manager) curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php php composer.phar install
• Create a test Twilio account and set up the SMS hook to the web server, pointing to answer-sms.php
• Config file is in /config/config.php.dist - you put in the twilio send number, sid and auth_token. Don't forget to config your MySQL database in the db section accordingly. We parse the data from the feeds array under "gtfs_exchange".
• In the cli there's a command-line PHP script called update_gtfs.php - you can run this manually or set up a cron job.
• The transit data is in GTFS format: http://developers.google.com/transit/gtfs/reference - We converted the GTFS formatted file into SQL in the data folder, under gtfs_tables.sql

Open issues & Future Feature Requests

• Right now, the bus IDs are in the GTFS data and - unfortunately - not part of the bus stop sign. As a workaround, we are playing around with taking a bus line and assigning a simple code for a stop. We are focusing on the South Beach Local (123) - Route ID #12782 in GTFS.
• Translations in Spanish and Haitian Creole
• Flesh out more the stop locator & maybe not use SMS to find location IDs.

Contributors

• Adrian Cardenas (arcardenas@gmail.com)
• Aleyda Mejia (aleydak.mejia@gmail.com)
• Ernie Hsiung (e@erniehsiung.com)
• Lisa Cawley (Copywriter, e-mail redacted)