RTS ‘Where’s My Bus?’ mobile app launched for RIT

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The Regional Transit Service ‘Where’s My Bus?’ mobile app is now available on Android and Apple devices for the RIT community. The new app provides access to comprehensive real-time information of bus arrival times, nearest stops, routes and service alerts for RIT bus routes, right in the palm of your hand.

Members of the RIT community can now use their mobile phones to plan their trip or visually track the nearest Regional Transit Service (RTS) bus to find out what time it will arrive.

Starting Feb. 10, RTS will offer RTS’ new ‘Where’s My Bus’ mobile app customized for routes that serve RIT. The app will allow students, faculty and staff to access comprehensive real-time information on bus arrival times, nearest stops, routes and service alerts for the Greater Rochester area, right in the palm of their hand.

‘Where’s My Bus’ for RIT is now available to download for free on the Google Play Store for Android and the Apple App Store for iOS devices.

“We are excited to launch our first ‘Where’s My Bus’ Mobile Application with RIT—our long-time partner,” said Bill Carpenter, RTS CEO. “Their tech-oriented community is the perfect environment to test-drive this innovative app.”

The ‘Where‘s My Bus’ app will display the next three bus arrival times, show the highlighted routes on a map and track the real-time bus location placed along those routes. Using the ‘Nearest Bus Stop Locator,’ riders can also use the GPS in their phone to find their location and the closest three bus stops around them.

“RIT students can be very busy and being able to see real-time bus locations on their phones will certainly save them time,” said Randy Vercauteren, director of Parking, Transportation and Building Services at RIT. “I think members of the community who have smart phones, Apple or Android, will really appreciate having this option.”

Other features include the ability to plan their trip using the RTS app via Google Transit. Similar to Google Maps, users can enter their starting destination—either by typing in the starting destination or by pulling their location via GPS—and their ending destination. It will display the walking and transit directions to get to their destinations at that current time.

Service alerts will be displayed in the app, with the capability to read more about each alert by clicking on the title. The app will also contain customer service information for RTS and RIT, and lost and found information for RTS.

“The app will make the bus riding experience better than ever for students, faculty and staff, providing convenience and saving them valuable time,” said Carpenter. “They’ll no longer have anxiety about when to show up for their bus because they’ll know exactly where it is at all times—in real-time.”

RTS plans to launch the mobile app for the general public in spring 2014.