Unlike 511.org, We're Never Too Busy for Transit

How will this weekend's Transit Camp affect you, the average beleaguered bus rider? In lots of ways: better websites, nicer maps, smarter rides, and information customized exactly to your transit needs ... which all adds up to you getting where you're going, faster and happier. Or at least, that's how it'll be if the Transit Camp evangelists can convince transit agencies to play along. The event is a sort of meeting-of-the-minds between transit-happy hackers and transit officials; the officials own the resources and data, and campers want to liberate it for you.

BART will be there to do a presentation, and Caltrain, and NextBus, and the MTC; they'll be joined by a ton of eager software developers and UI designers and social-engineering-types. Will Muni be there? Er, maybe. Possibly. In an unofficial capacity. Muni's been suspicious of information-sharing in the past, but maybe they can be convinced by the peppy energy of the Transit Campers -- and the success enjoyed by their projects such as IamCaltrain, and Zimride (for carpooling), and RideSpring (for incentivized rideshares and transit), and Efficient Palo Alto.

Camp happens this weekend, the 23rd and 24th, from 10:00 AM - 5:00 PM in Palo Alto. Yes, Palo Alto. Good luck figuring out how to take transit to get there! It's at the SocialText HQ, 665 High St. We won't be attending; but our friends are, and we'll be anxiously waiting to hear how it goes.