MENDOCINO Co., 6/17/19 — Have you ever been waiting at the bus stop, staring at the schedule, wondering if you’ve already missed your ride? Well, thanks to a cool new app from the Mendocino Transit Authority, you don’t have to wonder any more! The Route Shout app shows real-time data from MTA buses as they travel different routes, so once you download it, you won’t need to try to peer down the road, call the operator, or make a mad dash running to your stop again.
The app uses GPS to identify the exact location of buses, and will also help you locate the nearest bus stop once you download it onto any mobile phone, making it a convenient service for both daily riders and those that only catch the bus occasionally.
Here’s more information from the MTA:
MTA Boosts Bus Convenience for Customers
New Route Shout App Gives Real-Time Bus Arrival Info
Ukiah Mayor Mo Mulheren, who also serves on the board of directors of Mendocino Transit Authority (MTA), pumped a fist recently as she watched the MTA bus pull up to her Standley Street, Ukiah, stop at the same moment her iPhone said it would.
“It worked, here’s the bus!” she exclaimed before greeting bus driver James Criss.
Mulheren was testing MTA’s new GPS-enabled mobile technology, called Route Shout. The app gives anyone with a modern mobile phone access to real-time bus locations and schedules, including when exactly the bus will be arriving at any given stop.
Called Route Shout 2.0, the application can be downloaded for free to a mobile phone and used to find the nearest MTA bus stop, bus routes and schedules, and real-time bus arrival times. MTA expects the improved convenience to attract new riders to its Mendocino County bus service and enhance the experience for regular customers.
“Two-thirds of our customers use mobile phones to check bus routes and schedules, and that number continues to grow,” said Carla Meyer, general manager of MTA. “Now anyone can get real-time information. They can literally watch onscreen as the bus moves toward their stop and see a to-the-minute arrival time.”
The new app can be downloaded from the Apple Store or Google Play. Once downloaded, users can select Mendocino Transit Authority in the vendor list and get going. To find the nearest bus stop, users can enable the Locate Me button. To learn when the next bus will arrive at their stop, they can select Where’s My Bus? The new app is able to show more bus stops online than the main ones listed on the printed bus schedules. In addition, riders can save favorite routes and stops for quick reference.
“This is giant step forward in MTA’s transit technology, and it brings us a lot closer to our customers,” said Meyer. “Route Shout helps our riders check quickly, even if it’s just timing the dash out the door to catch the bus.”
Bringing Route Shout technology to Mendocino County has been a year-long process, beginning with an upgrade in the company’s digital service provider and installation of GPS technology and tablets on buses.
Jacob King, MTA’s operations manager who managed installation of the new technology, said, “Like any new software installation, tailoring Route Shout to customer needs here in Mendocino County was a process. And because of the terrain and remoteness of some areas of Mendocino County, we’ve had to concede that Route Shout isn’t always going to work perfectly on our south coast routes, in Anderson Valley, and sometimes on highway 20 on the bus route from Fort Bragg to Willits. We welcome feedback while it’s still new.”
Route Shout is a product of RouteMatch, an Atlanta-based provider of transit technologies to more than 600 transit agencies across the U.S. and world.
To download Route Shout, follow the easy steps pictured below:
For more information and help with downloading the app to your mobile device, visit http://mendocinotransit.org/news/get-real-time-bus-info-with-route-shout/
.As always, customers may check routes, schedules and service updates online at the MTA website, mendocinotransit.org or call (707) 462-1422 or 1 (800) 696-4682.
