Zahran to Raghadan - Working out the Kinks

The goal of this project is to create a map of Amman's public transportation. As far as I've been able to find, no such map exists. The Department of Transportation has a number of bus routes described verbally, but that's not a particularly useful way of presenting that information, since you can't really make use of isolated stops in the way you can use a map with routes to figure out how to get somewhere, especially when multiple routes are involved.

So after a few weeks of talking with people about good platforms to use, this project is launched. Today I tried out the GPS software, which took awhile to find the signal. Luckily, the route I was on was pretty simple so mapping it by hand wasn't all that difficult. I'm also trying to figure out the best way to incorporate pictures into the Google Maps Engine, so this is going to be a test of that system. Here's one of the busses I took, and we're going to see if I can link to the image on Google Maps Engine.

Raghadan to the Balad

When the GPS wasn't working, I was taking notes on buildings we were passing so I could identify the route we were taking later on, which luckily was quite simple. A few kids behind me saw me jotting down things I was seeing outside the window, and we ended up talking about this project. While we were talking though, I stopped paying attention to where we were going, which didn't turn out to be a problem since we stuck to some pretty-easy-to-figure-out routes. It just shows though how nice it will be to do this when the software is completely up and running, cause then I can spend more time talking with people. For example, these kids commute every day from Zarqa to a university in Amman, which is a pretty far commute, and I would have loved to talk with them more about that.

After going to Raghadan, I went back to the Balad and took a service to 4th circle and mapped that. Once the GPS is on, it tracks quite well, so one option would be to be my own Big Brother and do a GPS track of all my movements 24/7, but battery power might make that a little difficult.

For a first day though, things went pretty well. Tomorrow I'll map my route to Jordan University and back when I go out there for tutoring.

Here's the link to the Map in Progress: http://bit.ly/MappingAmman