Sudbury couple launches city transit app

Taking the transit system in any city can be daunting but a Sudbury couple is attempting to make navigating the bus system easier.

Hema Khairajani got the idea to develop the app after her husband, Pradish Shivprasad, tried to catch the bus one night after having a few drinks at an office party.

“They go on the mobile and grumble about how difficult it is to get the information,” she said.

Shivprasad eventually did make it home and suggested to his wife they develop a Sudbury transit app.

The city does have a website where transit users can input what stop they’re at and see when the next bus is coming, but Shivprasad said his co-workers didn’t find it user friendly.

The couple decided to move forward and develop their own transit app – using information from the city’s site, but enhancing it.

Collecting data

The couple soon realized collecting the information to put in the program was going to take a bit of work.

“The routes [online] weren’t detailed enough,” Khairajani said.

“There was nothing visual as far as where the routes are going.”

After realizing the information they wanted wasn’t readily available, they took steps to collect it.

“For six months, every weekend we would print a route map [and] say ‘This is the route that I’m going to cover today,’” Khairajani said.

“We'd bundle our son into the car seat and go.”

They drove each route, tracking GPS locations as to where the stops were.

From there, they developed the app, werzmyBus.

“We did our testing on our colleagues,” Khairajani said.

“There are a few of our colleagues who use buses every day to and from work. They’ve used the app and they gave us good feedback.”

Shivprasad said data in the app is also pulled from the city’s real-time data site that posts information about where buses currently are and how far they are away from any bus stop.

The app is available for smartphones - and both Apple and Android devices.