Travelling on a bus in Lincoln just got easier thanks to a website created by a University of Lincoln student.
Lincoln Bus has been created by third year Computer Science student Jacob Ellis and is an all-in-one bus timetable viewer for travelling around Lincoln. The website hopes to help people check all bus services, routes and departure and arrival times.
Jacob Ellis said: “Lincoln Bus does the work for you, select your bus service and your current location and then it will show you an estimated time for your next bus, plus all other bus departures from your location throughout the day.
“Bus timetables can often be confusing especially with long haul journeys or services where departures are at different times on different days of the week.”
Jacob built the site using the programming skills he’d learnt during his Computer Science degree and says it’s helped him to set up the bus timetable database and website.
“There’s a lot of programming in Computer Science and as such the course has taught me how to teach myself other programming languages.” He said.
“Lincoln Bus is predominantly programmed in PHP for web browsers, but I hope to release an Android app later. The database was made using SQL and the data is displayed to the user using SQL queries buried in PHP code.”
The website gives you the option to find bus routes depending on your location and you can choose whether you’re travelling from Lincoln or to the city.
The Lincoln Bus logo, created by Fine Art and Illustration student Bryony Loveridge, features the Lincoln skyline including the Cathedral, Lincoln Castle and other city landmarks.
The site gives you a variety of bus routes all in one place, and clicking on this with your location will give you the next bus time and the rest of the services for that day.
Jacob added: “My website recognises days of the week. So, for example if it is a Sunday, the estimated time box will display only the Sunday service timings throughout the day with the code ‘S’ to remind users that this journey is applicable only on a Sunday.
“Sometimes a bus service doesn’t run its full route. For example, the Service 1 Lincoln to Grantham at every other iteration goes as far as Wellingore, sometimes only Waddington if it’s a Sunday. In cases like this, Lincoln Bus will display a message such as WADDINGTON ONLY to show users that their next bus is not a full service.”
The website is currently in beta testing stage, but all Lincoln bus services will be added over the next few months along with new features users are to look forward too.
“The Journey Planner feature would allow the user to see their bus services and departures timings for multiple locations. For bus users new to the bus services in Lincoln, I am planning to add a feature whereby they select their location and the website displays which bus service they need as currently the user will need to know their bus service to make use of the website. This will be added as part of the Journey Planner.”
Jacob even hopes to include traffic information from Google to improve the estimated arrival and departure times in case of Lincoln congestion.
Great work Jacob – check out the site here and catch your bus with Lincolnbus.co.uk