Tiramisu is a crowd powered app aimed at helping people make better use of the public transit. It empowers people by allowing them to track buses in real time and provide other users with dynamic and accurate information about the location of a bus and its fullness.
If you tell Tiramisu what bus you are on, you can “record" your ride using the GPS in your phone. Tiramisu uses this recorded information to calculate real-time arrival information for other Tiramisu users. It will automatically stop recording at your destination. At the request of users, Tiramisu uses much less battery power than before.
When using Tiramisu, you can see bus information through a map, lists of nearby stops, and favorites that you pick. Use the "Get On" feature to see the stops nearest you. Buses labeled as Real-Time are buses with a fellow Tiramisu user on board. The Historic label is for buses fellow users have recorded frequently but nobody is currently on board. If neither is available, Tiramisu will show you the printed Scheduled arrive time.
Tiramisu also lets you rate bus fullness and report suggestions, problems, and positive experiences to the transit agency, with or without pictures. The website http://www.tiramisutransit.com has a live map and the contributed reports from users. If you submit a report, look for feedback on the website.
Tiramisu is mostly TalkBack compatible and includes other features designed to support riders with disabilities. Tiramisu is aimed at making public transit easy to access for everyone.
The application currently supports the Port Authority of Allegheny County (the transit agency for Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) and the Carnegie Mellon University bus shuttle. We will be adding more agencies soon – stay tuned!
This application is associated with research at the RERC on Accessible Public Transportation (http://www.rercapt.org) at Carnegie Mellon University. If you have questions about the research, contact: astein+tiramisu@cs.cmu.edu. Please submit suggestions on improvements through the app store or to tiramisu.transit@gmail.com
Please use with Android versions 2.1 or later.