TinPotBus

Gathering some data on just how often Auckland Transport buses are running early or late.

Goals

• Buses near me seem to often run 10+ minutes early, or drivers slope off and skip runs altogether. I want some numbers to prove there's a systemic problem, since my ad-hoc complaints go nowhere.
• Help other people who regularly encounter early/late/no-show buses.

Inspiration

The name is inspired from a TransportBlog post and Brian Rudman's column in the Herald:

Auckland Transport's latest "good news" bus-service statistics read like the electoral results of some tin-pot dictator.

Indeed, they're so fantastical any self-respecting dictator would have had them scaled down.

The transport overlords claim last month, Auckland's public bus fleet scored 99.88 per cent for "reliability" and 99.24 per cent for punctuality.

And a follow-up comment by deserthead:

Birkenhead bus 99.98%
Saddam Hussein (1995) 99.96%
NZ Bus 99.94%
Bashar al Assad (2007) 97.60%
Urban Express 95.96%

But maybe we're just all really unlucky or making a big deal out of nothing?

Okay...?

But wait, we have this fancy realtime bus tracking system, right? Even though apparently, it needs replacing. In the meantime, how about we just look at when buses go past bus stops and see how often they're early or late? Of course the times are an estimation and of course they don't apply everywhere, but lets have a go and see what we learn. Anyway, passengers are worried about 5+ minutes early or late, not 30 seconds.

Uses the same requests that the Maxx Real Time Board does. Acts like a browser as much as possible.

Install & Configure

1. Clone the code
2. Create and activate a python virtualenv (virtualenv venv; source venv/bin/activate)
3. pip install -r requirements.txt
4. Create tinpotbus/tinpotbus/settings_site.py and override any Django settings you need to.
5. python tinpotbus/manage.py syncdb --migrate
6. python tinpotbus/manage.py runserver to start the debug server
7. Head to http://localhost:8000/admin/ and create a Watch or two. Use the Stop and Route numbers from the Maxx Real Time Board.
8. Run python tinpotbus/manage.py watch_refresh and see the options for how to update regularly (the website does it every 45 seconds fwiw). Don't abuse the system.