Ride LYNX? Charlotte Light Rail is one app you need to try
A group of technically-minded Charlotteans created a free app to help people navigate the LYNX system. The app is Charlotte Light Rail and the group calls themselves Team Luna.
Joseph Guerra and Brandon Fancher met at a learning program at Skookum, and Python and CharlotteJS, two techie Meetup groups in Charlotte. As part of the Skookum Nation program, they developed a poverty awareness app for the United Way. Instead of parting ways, they decided to add a few others to the group and form Team Luna.
“We would like to continue contributing to the Charlotte community and continue making digital products that can help the community and that’s where we came up with the idea for the light rail,” Fancher said.
Team Luna is not a business or non-profit organization – each member has a day job. They are Joseph Guerra, MapAnything; Derek Piccola, MapAnything; Tim Johnson, Red Ventures; Alfonso Cabrera, Red Ventures; Babak Keyvani, Central Piedmont Community College; and Brandon Fancher, Levvel.
Charlotte Light Rail launched on Aug. 1. To date, it has 350-400 downloads. The app has a five star rating with at least 16 reviews. It has the highest rating of the three apps available in Charlotte to navigate the LYNX system. (The other two apps are iCatch LYNX and CLT Light Rail.)
The app features an extensive Q&A link and an interactive map that allows you to touch a stop along the route to find out when the next train will arrive or depart. It lists the expected schedule for weekdays, Saturdays and Sundays for each stop. Based on your location, it will tell you which stop is closest whether you are driving or walking. Right now, it is only available for iOS. Team Luna plans to develop the app for the Android platform.
It took Team Luna 500 hours over four months to research, develop and go through the approval process with Apple. (Read Guerra’s detailed explanation if you want to know about the technical process the team used to develop the app.) They did not have any sponsors or partnerships. It cost them a couple of hundred dollars out of their own pockets.
I was surprised to find out that Team Luna made the app without consulting with Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS) staff. Olaf Kinard with CATS public information office says that CATS is open to working with local groups. CATS has been criticized for not releasing real-time data to groups like Team Luna. Fancher said that sharing this real-time information is an industry standard in other major cities.
Guerra said, “A few people in the community have encouraged CATS and the City to release the transit data in an open and secured fashion so that other app makers can help people experience the city and get around.” Members of the technical community in Charlotte have called out CATS in tweets:
Good. But also demand they fix their lousy app, and preferably make their gps data available for public use. @CATSRideTransit
— Towner Blackstock (@townerb) August 25, 2016
“We get requests for data, but have not gotten any requests locally,” said Kinard. “We have heard through the grapevine that people want the data.”
Team Luna has plans to contact CATS to see how they can work together. Fancher said, “We want to reach out in a very deliberate fashion to see ways we can collaborate or what we can do to make this even better for the people of Charlotte.”
Photos: Team Luna
This story was originally published September 20, 2016 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Ride LYNX? Charlotte Light Rail is one app you need to try."