Last November I was very excited that the MBTA was experimenting with an XML feed that gathered the locations of buses along five of their routes and made the data available to web developers, and I wrote a PHP page to keep track of them even though none of them were routes that were at all useful to me.

The trial still hasn't expanded, but someone has now provided something of a substitute for the interim period - Nickolai Zeldovich's MBTA map shows the last known location of all buses with GPS units, and tries its best to guess what route they're on based on where they've just been. (Also sometimes puts them in Bolivia or the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, but that's a separate data problem.)

I tried this on Monday with the CT2, the route that I sometimes take home, leaving the office when I saw one of them approaching a couple of streets away. I drew into sight of the bus stop just in time to see it leave, so it seems that I need to work on my timing to compensate for the delay in updates until the actual time predictions are in place.

But after missing it, I opened up the computer, got on to the nearby bookshop's free wireless and was able to watch the buses approaching remotely, matching up the ID numbers painted on their sides to the ones that I was seeing coming past in front of me - it was amazing. Well, perhaps I'm just easily amused, but more importantly, it's striking how much the wait is improved when you can see something coming, and don't have to just stand around wondering if you're ever going to be picked up or not. This map made me enjoy waiting for the CT2, and as far as I'm concerned, that puts it well into Nobel Prize territory.