The web app uses GPS to determine arrival times at specific stops. Riders can also sign up for text and email alerts on the site. Last Monday, the city launched a beta version of a tracking program for MTA buses. Over the next 100 days, the transit authority will test the web-based My MTA Tracker for Bus in focus groups made up of employees, riders and others. The program will be available on the My MTA Tracker website. The burning question was whether or not the data feeding the MTA's tracker was consumable by third-parties. To Whong, the bus tracker is a “perfect example” of misplaced priorities by the government. “Let Baltimore’s community of developers and civic hackers worry about building the user-facing apps.” “The MTA should put their energy into improving the reliability of the real-time bus locations, then building a well documented, standards-based open API,” said Chris Whong, a Baltimore-bred civic hacker now living in Brooklyn. That’s great and all, but some civic-minded technologists say the agency is going about it all wrong. Instead of venturing out beyond the curb to see if the bus is coming, the Maryland Transit Administration wants riders to be able to check their phones.
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