Transit Panel

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  Demo showing a few different routes

Inspiration

I want to make it easy to go places and hang out with my friends. Transit Panel helps optimize my commute so I can spend less time getting there, and more time there.

What it does

It tells you how many minutes from now you should leave your apartment in order to catch the next train. It supports the NYC MTA (new feature from this hackathon!), CitiBike, PATH, NJ Waterway Ferries, and a few other services and features (e.g. a clock).

How we built it

It's built in React and runs on a $75 Android tablet (Amazon Fire HD 10). It doesn't have a backend; it's purely client-side. Users can host their configs on GitHub Gist.

Challenges we ran into

• MTA requires an API key. For now, we just ask the user to get and provide their own key.
• Setup flow is complicated. Priya Rose (@prigoose) contributed a TypeForm that makes it easier to set up and create a config! https://priyaghose.typeform.com/to/uyumGvUt

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I am a Python programmer who doesn't know anything about web, but I built a React app!

What we learned

• React is fun!
• create-react-app is pretty awesome and it's all you really need for a small-to-medium complexity app.
• It's sad that there aren't more free, web-accessible realtime transit APIs (no API key, liberal CORS policy, JSON so it's easy for web apps).

What's next for Transit Panel

• Get the word out, get more people to use it
• Further improve NYC MTA support
• Support showing service problems and unexpected delays in the UI

Built With

• react