Students, faculty and other members of the campus community will see the wheels on the bus go round in a whole new way, as Transpo now offers an online bus tracking service.
The service allows anyone in the University community to track Transpo buses in real time, giving riders a better idea when a particular bus will arrive at a given location, student body president Brett Rocheleau said. This information is available online via http://nd.doublemap.com/map or through the DoubleMap Bus Tracker app for iPhone and Android phones.
Rocheleau said the application overlays icons of buses on a map of the Transpo routes to show where the buses are at all times. The service will be valuable for people who want to avoid waiting outdoors for the bus during harsh weather, he said.
"You can stay inside and track the bus, then step outside just as it arrives," he said.
The service will be especially useful for students who use the SWEEP route Friday and Saturday nights and students who rely on Transpo buses to visit or work in South Bend, Rocheleau said. He said the service is provided by DoubleMap, an organization based in Bloomington, Ind., that offers GPS bus-tracking applications for personal computers and mobile phones.
Rocheleau said he and other members of student government worked with DoubleMap representative Peter SerVaas, who brought a similar service to Indiana University while he was student body president there for the 2009-10 school year. Rocheleau said he and student body president emeritus Pat McCormick looked into the possibility of such a program during the 2011-12 school year, but it wasn't until SerVaas contacted Notre Dame's student government that the DoubleMap system was implemented.
"Pat [McCormick] and I looked at this issue a little bit last year, and we worked with Transpo to consider installing this sort of system," Rocheleau said. "Then Peter [SerVaas] came to us and was able to set it up at no charge, so it was perfect."
According to the DoubleMap website, the service is in place at several other universities, including SUNY Cortland and the University of Cincinnati.
The new service will be one of the final projects of the outgoing student government administration, Rocheleau said.
The service can be accessed at http://nd.doublemap.com/map
