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February 21, 2008

VIDEO: Take a Tour of Cisco's Green "Bus of the Future"

The Who sang about the "Magic Bus," and while the bus unveiled yesterday in San Francisco at Cisco's Connected Urban Development conference isn't magic, the San Francisco Chronicle called it "the bus of the future."

The bus is a joint project between the city of San Francisco (where we got our name!) and Cisco. The bus is a hybrid (look at all the batteries on top of the bus) and the technology and "green" goal is to provide wireless internet access (Cisco equipment, of course) and other services on the bus to increase ridership. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is quoted in the Chronicle article saying, "This is a smart bus in every way, shape and form. You can download music, you can play video games. It's a bus where you are connected. It's constantly generating information about your connection to the rest of the Muni system."

So, we invite you to take a technology tour of the bus with Cisco's Dave Evans (Chief Technologist of our Internet Business Solutions Group) and also hear from Muni driver Johnny Mathis (yes, that's his real name) about why he thinks riders will like this bus.

Posted by John Earnhardt on February 21, 2008 02:02 PM

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Comments

Could a service be added so that folks using their laptops on the bus can receive a popup notification when their stop is approaching?

Posted by Jim Strasbaugh on February 26, 2008 01:04 PM

This is a great idea. But some quick thoughts:
- It would be even greater if Cisco could implement this system for employees from SF and different locations. That way we could stop being envious of the other companies that already do so.

- SF would have to seriously improve their security. where would those buses be garaged with all this technology? Also, internal vandalism should be prevented unless of course the 'plan' would be to only service privileged areas...ha! don't you love the social structure?

Posted by Edu on March 12, 2008 10:21 AM

A service could indeed be added to notify you on your laptop when you approach your stop, but considering all the operating system variants, security concerns with installing software on PCs, etc., we chose to focus on the touch screen displays in the bus instead.

The content on the touch screens is web based, so a user could use their laptop to connect to the same service, thereby getting real-time location information on their laptop / PDA, etc. One interesting variant of your suggestion might be to send an SMS message to the users cell phone as they approach their stop...

Posted by Dave Evans on March 18, 2008 09:40 AM