By Lookout Staff

July 23, 2015 -- Santa Monica’s Big Blue Bus has become the second transit agency in California to offer “realtime” data that allows passengers to know where their bus is and when it is expected to arrive at their stop.

With the roll out of its General Transit Feed Specification realtime (GTFS-realtime) data last month, the City’s bus system joined BART in the San Francisco Bay Area as the only agencies offering the free service.

“With real-time arrival information available, riders have the convenience of knowing when their bus will arrive, so they can spend less time waiting and more time on other activities,” said Ed King, Transit Director for the Big Blue Bus, which operates some 200 vehicles around Santa Monica and the Westside.

“Having real-time arrival information available will reduce anxiety and uncertainty associated with using the bus,” King said.

The GTFS-realtime feeds allow Google Maps to publicly display Live Transit Updates as well as service alerts on its NextBus app, officials said. It also allows third-party application developers to “use these feeds to create their own apps.”

Already, City Mapper, Transit and Moovit are using the agency’s live feed, transit officials said.

The agency began building its GTFS-realtime in order to feed information to NextBus, which “provides bus arrival predictions based off of GPS information and historical travel time data,” officials said.

“With the NextBus rollout, Santa Monica riders now have access to the same arrival information system used by other major operators in Southern California, including Los Angeles Metro and UCLA, for a more seamless transit experience across the Southland,” Big Blue Bus officials said.

Customers without smartphones can access arrival information by texting “SMBBB” followed by a space and the stop number to 41411 service or by calling 310-451-5444 and entering their four-digit stop number, officials said.

The agency will post signs with bus stop IDs throughout the system this summer, they said.

“Real-time trip planning has been one of our top customer requests, so improving customer experience for riding our system is a primary objective,” King said.

The new service “will contribute to a winning combination of better service and additional feedback to further increase transit ridership and quality of life in our region,” he said.