Students enduring freezing wind, rain or snow while waiting for Penn Transit may be in for a shorter wait thanks to the recent installation of a GPS tracking system.
Operational since September last year, the service enables students to check when the shuttle or bus they are waiting for will arrive at the desired transit stop.
The Penn Transit GPS tracking Web site - www.upenn.edu/gps - also contains an alert page where students can check to see if anything out of the ordinary has occurred, such as an accident or road-closure.
The Web site shows a map of the shuttle routes, which students can click to view the predicted arrival time. The prediction is based on past performance, speed and traffic conditions.
Business Services financed the project because shuttles were having a hard time keeping to a schedule in cases of bad traffic, weather or roadwork, said spokeswoman Barbara Lea-Kruger.
"It is extremely frustrating not knowing when something is coming," she said.
The GPS system was installed in July, pilot tested in August and went live in September.
"A few weeks ago, the Chestnut Bridge was closed for road work, and we had to redirect the buses," said Penn Transit assistant manager John Gustafson. "This information was updated on the alerts page within 10 minutes."
Lea-Kruger added, "Students are used to technology and can access the tracking facility through any Internet-capable mobile phone."
Penn Transit wants to be able to document the path of each shuttle, so "if a student calls to say that the shuttle passed them by, we can replay the GPS history and check what happened," she said.
Neehar Mokal, an Engineering graduate student, said the new system has definitely made it easier to catch a shuttle without waiting 20 minutes on the side of the road.
But he added that refreshing the browser on his phone is the only way to track the movement of the shuttle while he is waiting since his iPhone is not Flash-equipped.
Some students, like Ranjeeta Pal, a graduate student in the Annenberg School for Communications, did not know about the GPS system and stressed the need to advertise the development.
In addition to GPS, Penn Transit buses are each going to be equipped with two bike racks by the end of the month.
"We are trying to make Penn more bike-friendly," Lea-Kruger said .
