The Rant

While the majority of Hillsborough County awaits improved mass transit, USF has been doing some dinkering on their own now. Apparently they began providing students with "BullTracker" which is a cool website that tracks the university's fleet of shuttle buses in real time and allows students to better guess their trips to area shuttle stops.

Clicking on a vehicle icon produces live details including how full the shuttle is!

Over the years, since I left no less, the USF Bullrunner service has become a fully qualified mass transit subdivision for the entire university neighborhood in Hillsborough County. Its shuttle buses run through not just on-campus locations but through local neighborhoods and apartment complexes, not to mention the HART transfer center. Not everybody can use it, you have to be a staff or student of the university - but in that neighborhood, well, that might just be everybody.

Anyone Got the Scoop?

I was unable to find out anything by a first-tier Google search except that apparently USF itself trademarked the meme "BullTracker", which suggests to me that it's all somehow an internal project. I'd appreciate more input from anybody in the know as a comment entry here.

To try this thing, go here and click "BullTracker".  You open the Google-integrated map, select a route or routes you're interested in, then sit back and see where the shuttles on those routes are that minute. You can click on any shuttle icon for information metrics on the ride including, get this, how full the shuttle is!

Tell me this ain't coolest thing.

Tampa Rail Express Links

News

• Light rail in Phoenix: what's that costing them? - 10 Connects
• District 4 commission race Hackworth challenges Latvala - Tampa Bay Newspapers

Tweets by TBARTA

• Get excited Pinellas County! The Jolley Trolley will extend its routes beginning mid-November!

Tweets by HART

• Current openings at HART: Benefits Coordinator - position is closing TODAY! Apply now
• Here's a recap of the 2010 APTA Awards held in San Antonio, Texas.
• Video of light rail vehicles (LRV) examples. If you've never seen one, this will blow your mind. LRVs & techno music

You Tube

• Examples of Light Rail Vehicles

Tweets by Moving Hillsborough Forward

• It's three weeks until election day! We need volunteers to help us to the finish line!
• Great story on Ch. 10. making out points even stronger
• MHF team at events throughout the county tonight from Temple Terrace to Ruskin.

Tampa Rail Announcement

Tampa Rail has had a Facebook Group for quite awhile now. It is the largest pro-rail activity center for the development of Hillsborough urban rail transit on Facebook. I also created a Facebook "page" at about the same time, but never opened it up to avoid diluting the brand effort under one roof.

Well, it turns out that there is a compelling benefit to the "page" system over the "group" system. With pages, you can incorporate Twitter feed sources into a page's news stream.  Because of this capability I've opened the page to the public and one can now easily follow most of the entry action directly from said Tampa Rail page on Facebook. Posts that appear here will now appear automatically there, and, eventually vice versa. Join the group, and, also, become a fan of the page. By "liking" the page or becoming a fan, you subscribe to it and will be notified via Facebook of news posts, etc.