The days of squinting your eyes and wondering whether that’s the Connective Corridor bus coming your way are numbered.

This month, Centro will launch an 18-month, GPS pilot program giving all passengers access to an interactive map of 20 buses, including those that navigate the Connective Corridor routes. Through their website, riders will be able to input their current location and destination and track their bus to the very minute.

The system also includes automatic audio announcements of upcoming stops and an LED display system at 15 locations on Syracuse University’s campus and around downtown that provides a countdown until the next bus arrival. Once the pilot program is established – and a test run on December 14 “went brilliantly” in the words of Joe DeGray, Centro’s Vice President of Operations – the system will expand to every route.

This first round of upgrades cost in the neighborhood of $2.8 million and is being funded through $2.25 in SAFETEA-LU grant monies Centro received in partnership with the University, along with 10% matches from both SU and the NYSDOT. “It’s going to start here, but it really has the ability to go through our entire system, and we serve about 40,000 people per day,” reports DeGray.

If this weren’t enough reason for bus-riders to rejoice, a small team of SU volunteers has been steadfastly working since October to launch an app for the iPhone. Led by PhD candidate Keisuke Inoue and School of Design faculty Jen Hamilton, the team is anxious to get the app into the public realm. “Every student I know has (an iPhone) tethered to their side,” Hamilton says.

The USE app, a play on SyracUSE, can be imagined as a fireworks show with four components: a bus tracker, event listings, social networking tools, and “augmented reality.” The bus tracker, set to debut in February, ties into Centro’s GPS infrastructure and displays the buses moving along the screen in real time.

The other components have no set release dates, but will allow users to do things like move their fingers over the screen and see events pop up around the city. A position-based social networking system, similar to Netflix and Foursquare, will calculate a user’s preferences and make event recommendations.

Augmented reality will seemingly link cell phone photos of landmarks – for example, the Everson Museum – to Wikipedia information. In other words, the USE app will be smart enough to know where you are and kind enough to use that knowledge to your advantage.  

With Centro’s enhancements days away and the USE app not far behind, the hope is that buses will be seen as a more convenient means of transportation. Robbi Farschman, director of the Connective Corridor, is an advocate of public transportation and a frequent rider of the bus herself. “I hear a lot of reasons why folks don’t take the bus – even people who are traveling directly from campus to the Warehouse – and ‘not knowing when the bus is coming’ is a big one. I think these two developments will go a long way in removing this barrier.”