Archive for the ‘ Civic Software ’ Category

Building on the success of the Walk Score API and Amenity Map currently used by over 4,000 websites, yesterday we also launched our Public Transit API which enables Web developers to easily add public transportation information to their websites.

With the Public Transit API, real estate and other website owners can show nearby public transit stops on a map, show a text description of nearby transit stops and routes, and show the Transit Score of a specific location.

And we’re excited that ZipRealty is the first brokerage firm to integrate Transit Score into their website.

“A growing number of home shoppers are seeking out homes that offer strong public transit options, high walkabilty scores and green features,” said ZipRealty’s Chief Home Hunter Leslie Tyler. “Showing Transit Score ratings for all home listings on our website gives our clients additional information about alternative transportation that they need before making an offer on a home.”

Read ZipRealty’s press release.

Almost a year ago we asked Is ZipRealty the Greenest Real Estate Site? What do you think?

We’ve now added transit data from 80+ agencies to Walk Score as part of our grant from the Rockefeller Foundation.

While adding transit to Walk Score we realized there was a larger opportunity to:

1. Highlight all the great apps that use public transit data
2. Show which transit agencies do and don’t provide open data to software developers

Announcing City-Go-Round

So today we’re launching a new site called City-Go-Round where you can search for innovative transit apps and websites in your city. You can also check whether your transit agency provides open data.

Find apps in your city:
www.CityGoRound.org

Read the City-Go-Round press release.

These Apps are Rad

We had no idea how many innovative transit apps were already out there.  Here are some of our favorites:

One Bus Away: Find out exactly where your bus is in Seattle.  Check City-Go-Round to see if your city has a real-time arrival app.

Acrossair: Hold your iPhone up to see augmented-reality transit maps.  Whoa, the future is now.

Exit Strategy NYC: Perhaps the most creative app we’ve seen, Exit Strategy NYC shows you where to stand so you can get out of the subway station faster!

A huge thank you to Benjamin de la Peña and team at the Rockefeller Foundation for supporting City-Go-Round and public transit on Walk Score.

Homes near transit are some of the only properties that have appreciated in value over the last year¹—yet other than Estately.com, we haven’t found any real estate sites that let you find homes near transit.

Yesterday we took a baby step towards helping people find walkable, transit-friendly homes with the release of our Transit Time Maps.  Eventually, real estate sites will be able to use this technology for searches like, “Find me homes within a 30 minute transit commute from work.”

Here’s how far you can travel in 45 minutes on transit from Market and Powell in SF (click to see the interactive version):

Check out the BART stops in the East Bay!

Here’s how far you can travel on transit in 45 minutes from 4th and Pike in Seattle:

And yes, homes near transit are better for the environment, your health, energy independence, and your sanity.

But wait… how does Walk Score calculate all those shortest path trees over the transit graph in real-time?  Enter Graphserver by Brandon Martin-Anderson.  Graphserver is an open source multi-modal trip planner (think open source Google Transit).  Anyone can contribute to Graphserver and it’s free to use.

Plus, Brandon rides a really sweet Schwinn tandem bike all by himself (we are still trying to figure out why):

News update from Brandon: He says, “People ride alone in their cars all the time so what’s the big deal about me riding my bike alone?”

Mike Mathieu, founder of Front Seat (makers of Walk Score), will be speaking at O’Reilly’s ETech conference today.

Mike’s talk “Save the Programmer, Save the Planet” outlines the emerging civic software movement where tech-savvy heroes leverage new web technologies to build software with a social impact.  Mike will talk about software solutions to problems that seem unrelated to software.  For example, government corruption, housing the homeless, and halting climate change.

You can watch an early version of this talk from Startpad Seattle or follow Mike on Twitter.