Vote for EESI’s “Texting for Transit” Proposal on Change.org

EESI has submitted an idea to Change.org's "Ideas for Change in America" competition to use information technology to make public transportation super easy-to-use and attractive to all demographics. The 10 most popular ideas will be presented to the Obama administration, and Change.org will support a series of grassroots campaigns to turn the winning ideas into reality.

While we work to build new public transportation capacity, a lot can be done to make better use of existing options and blaze the path to a future where public transportation is a mainstream way to travel for all Americans.

Reliability and convenience are regularly cited as the most important factors to transit riders --even more than travel time. Reliability and convenience begins with knowing where to catch a train, bus, or streetcar, when it will actually be there, and how much time the trip will take. At present, mechanisms for relaying such information to the traveling public are generally crude at best, especially for buses--street signs, printed schedules, automated information lines, and websites are too often confusing, time-consuming, inaccurate, or simply not available when they are needed, especially for visitors and less-experienced travelers.

Our idea was to create a simple text-message based system that would provide real-time information and which could be standardized across the country. With more than 270 million cell phones in use across the nation, almost everyone would have access to public transportation information at their fingertips.

Click here to learn more about EESI's proposal and cast your vote! Remember to click the link on your confirmation email to make sure your vote counts.