waffle-iron / track-a-cat

Real-time location-tracking app for Chatham Area Transit's new trolley fleet, with plans to expand eventually to entire bus service area

Chatham Area Transit Vehicle Tracker

A project of Open Savannah, a brigade of Code for America

Project Maintainer: Brian Young.

Project Contributors: Carl V. Lewis, Brandon Doucal, Jorge Espinoza, Grant Sparks, <yournamehere?>.

Interested in contributing? Let us know by dropping a line.

Problem Statement

Despite a footprint of 67 buses traveling 19 different routes throughout the Savannah-area, only about four percent of Chatham County residents currently use CAT public transit buses in their daily commutes.

But what if we made it easier, more reliable and more convenient to take public transit instead of sitting in Abercorn gridlock?

One point of friction holding back broader adoption of CAT in recent years has been the lack of available real-time tracking information on where CAT buses are located and how far away they are from reaching the next stop. Almost every other metropolitan area with a public bus system of Savannah's size offers this service to riders, but so far, efforts to implement similar real-time tracking solutions for CAT's fleet have failed to come to fruition. We believe we can change that.

Estimated Rough Project Timeline

• May 9 - Kickoff

• July 1 - Rough deadline to launch initial Phase One implementation on historic district circulator buses.

• Sept.-Oct. - Goal is to leverage success of Phase One to lobby for system-wide implementation before CAT's board.

• Dec. 2017 - Jan. 2018 - Have tracking solution implemented across CAT's entire fleet with launch of Phase Two.

• Feb-Mar. 2018 - Assess performance and reliability to begin Phase Three, which is the maintenance phase.