DC’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer strikes again. In June, OCTO, DDOT, and the Office of Planning created Where’s My Bus, a Web app that lets you find out real-time positions of all Circulator buses. Today, they announced an iPhone app (“DC Circulator”) to make it even easier for iPhone users to find Circulator stops and track their buses.

Photos courtesy of DDOT.

Where’s My Bus and the iPhone app don’t predict how long it will take for a bus to arrive, but do let you know if a bus is close, and keep tabs on its progress toward your stop. The iPhone app adds a map of the Circulator system and a native interface. The screen shots label one of the features “find closest stop,” but it’s not clear if that uses your GPS location or just lets you pick a stop from a menu. I’ve emailed DDOT to follow up, or one of you with an iPhone can download the app for 99¢ and post in the comments. Update: Once you pick a route, the app will identify the closest stop on a particular route using the phone’s GPS.

An even better app would plot the buses on a real-time display, as NextBus does, but OCTO got this application done in a short time and probably with a very small quantity of developer resources. That’s what a good technology outfit should be doing: finding the “low-hanging fruit” and launching many useful tools in short periods of time.

Even better yet would be an app that combines NextBus and Circulator locations, so you don’t need two apps just because you sometimes ride a Metrobus and sometimes the Circulator. Maybe NextBus Information Systems could upgrade their iPhone app to include Circulator as well. This is one example of why Metro should release the NextBus position data in an API; if they did, maybe OCTO would put it into their app, or someone else could build an integrated tool.

Update: OCTO will also be releasing the source code for the app, so that other developers can add features in the future. Great move.

Update 2: If you want to download the app, it’s listed as “DC Circulator” in the App Store.

David Alpert created Greater Greater Washington in 2008 and was its executive director until 2020. He formerly worked in tech and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco Bay, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He lives with his wife and two children in Dupont Circle.