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Published in News

Teen helps to save bus department

by on30 March 2009

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Using internet technology


One of
the US's smallest transit services has suddenly become more efficient thanks to a teen geek with an interest in buses.

Lexington's Lexpress has six bus routes. However Danny Moraff, who likes buses  was playing around with Google Transit, a feature of Google Maps that reminds users seeking driving directions that they can also take buses and trains. The service helped users figure out how much time they'll need for their trip and where and when to show up for a bus or subway.

He joined Lexington's transit advisory board, convinced officials it would be a wizard wheeze to sign up Lexpress to Google.  He offered to do all the donkey work. Moraff spent all his free time riding six bus routes to plot the longitude, latitude, and typical arrival times on every street in the system. He had to log every intersection in town and figuring out the computer coding that suited Google's engineering needs. He spend 60 to 100 hours over a period of 18 months to do the job.

Google helped Moraff identify kinks in his data. Lexpress became available on Google Transit in December.  It has been estimated that he has saved the small company thousands and enabled it to provide a modern service with more accurate timetables.
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