I believe I had mentioned somewhere in a previous post regarding the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority (or PSTA)’s new real-time bus tracker and bus arrival prediction systems. This is the same system that the Sarasota County Area Transit Authority (or SCAT) had been using for well over a year now. For the last few months, PSTA’s system had been in test mode. But now, the full version has been brought online and you can take a look at it now by visiting www.psta.net and selecting the banner at the top that reads “REAL TIME BUS INFORMATION”!

Now how exactly does the system work? It is a GPS-based system that utilizes equipment on each and every bus to provide GPS information to servers, which is then provided to the interactive interface on PSTA & SCAT’s websites. You can also access this information via a smartphone app or text message. See the full blog post from PSTA.

To get full instructions on how to use the new systems, please see the links below:

• PSTA
• SCAT

And this just in….HART has announced it will soon use similar real-time transit technology. Read their blog post!