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Tracking Volvo buses on the road
afsal - 27 July, 2009 | Bangalore | Bus | Action | Transportation | public transport
Hello,
I have started tracking BMTC Vajra that I use for traveling to work. I live near Whitefiled and work at Koramangala. The buses I use are the following - 335E, 331A, 333P followed by 411K, 505A or 201R if I do manage to get them.
You can follow some of the time line at the following twitter time line for different routes
Vajra 335E Vajra 331A Vajra 333P Vajra 505A Vajra 411K
If you have GPRS enabled phone and can tweet on the move, you need to create a twitter account for you and then start following the above accounts to get updates when I am traveling on these buses. I normally leave between 7:15 to 7:45 from Hopefarm and track the journey almost every day up and down
If you are interested in contributing to tracking any of the above routes do let me know. Once the above accounts start following you then you can send direct message to the above accounts which will be retweetted by grouptweet. We need more volunteers to make this effort successful. Currently I have only another volunteer who is tracking 505A.
I encourage more Vajra users with GPRS or net connectivity on the move to start tracking their journey by creating twitter accounts for Vajra routes and setting them up along similar lines.
Do contact me if you need help in how to set this up or if you want to contribute to the effort.
Thanks
Afsal
COMMENTS
It might be possible with SMS but I have not tried
afsal - 28 July, 2009 - 16:49
If you are interested in receiving updates then you are better of having GPRS. Google channels allow you to receive updates from SMS if you create channel using twitter RSS feed. But there is no assurance for time frame for delivery.
If you just want to make twitter updates from your cell, twitter does provide a local number without having to pay internationa SMS rates. I have not tried it out. But some have reported that it is not working from all service providers.
Posting SMS updates to Twitter
Another option was to use vakow . This also seem to have stopped.
Yes GPRs is the best option. It is certainly cheaper than sending SMS.
Thanks
Afsal
Great initiative!
kbsyed61 - 27 July, 2009 - 21:42
afsal, Thanks for taking up the initiative. Pls keep Praja posted on the things you are tracking like punctuality of the buses, load factor during peak hours, conductor/driver behavior etc. syed
Great idea!
megabytes - 28 July, 2009 - 15:18
It would have been better to send sms but for some reason twitter has stopped sending/receiving tweets from india mobiles through sms. The only way out if for an international sms that might be 3Rs per msg depending on tariff plans :(
http://www.btis.in/buses.htm
seems broken. Cant be sure it does the tracking properly. Its also very difficult to use even if the data is accurate.
Hi Afsal, anything new to share?
silkboard - 29 December, 2009 - 08:04
Any updates, any new experiments?
If you have 2 month worth of tracking data for 5-6 buses, that itself will be an excellent thing to share and analyze.
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