Where is my bus?

RouteShout is a new service being piloted in Pittsburgh (but available for purchase to any city) that lets riders text a number posted on a bus stop and get texted back the arrival time of the next buses scheduled to reach that stop. [via Pittsburgh Metblogs] I love how simple and yet useful this idea seems. They don’t seem to be trying to solve the entire “where is my bus” question – you can’t go to a website and see maps of all the buses, you can’t send complex queries about fares or what transfers are needed to get from here to there. But if what you want to know is when the next bus is coming, you get that information quickly and easily using technology that many people already have in their pocket. Even with the ability to check a website on my phone, I think I would prefer using this service because it just seems so streamlined. The DeepLocal company that has developed this service also seems like a pretty interesting group; they appear to have developed a number of these very minimal-function, minimal-interface systems.