Where’s the bus?

Planning a trip on a Capital Metro bus is expected to get easier as early as mid-January, thanks to a contract with San Francisco-based mobility solutions company Swiftly Inc. The contract was approved by the Capital Metro board Nov. 14 with the goal of improving the customer experience by providing precise information about when a bus will arrive at a stop. Compared to the data available to customers today, which can typically pinpoint a bus’ distance within a 3-5 minute margin of error, Swiftly claims to use “sophisticated algorithms” and “billions of data points” to provide updates to customers in real time. Capital Metro staff is now working on beta-testing the new features and the change will be reflected in the CapMetro app once testing is completed. Based on previous successes in a growing list of cities including Los Angeles and Boston, choosing transit in Austin should soon become slightly less difficult.