It seems that everyone who analyzes historical NextBus data has a different way of archiving their data. There are lots of ways one can use GIS to analyze this data, from creating movies showing the pulse of the transit system, to analyzing on-time performance, to finding bottlenecks. In that vein, I’ve created a short Python script that fetches NextBus data and puts it into a PostGIS database for analysis. You can download the latest version here.

I was talking to some friends at school tonight, and I realized what a barrier it can be to actually get some of the open-source geospatial tools I’ve talked about on this blog going. So I’m going to start a series about how one can get started with these tools, from a level-zero technical knowledge (of course, I assume basic GIS knowledge—if you know what I mean when I say buffering, geocoding and vector analysis, you’re fine).

**Update 2012-02-02 17:57 -0800:I just wrote a post about another way to do this. I really like QGIS. It’s a powerful GIS that runs on Linux (among other operating systems) and doesn’t require incredible amounts of CPU. One criticism I had of it was that it did not provide the same ‘click-and-go’ basemap experience one can get with ArcGIS for making simple maps (i.e. Add Basemap, select Bing, DeLorme, &c. and you’re done).