Computer Science Student Develops Transit App

Photo and article by: 
Jacob Morgan
Metro Saskatoon, Nov. 7, 2013

Daniel Sanche was tired of waiting for the bus and for what he wanted to see in a Saskatoon Transit app.

So last summer he spent hours of his downtime programming BusFinder, an iPhone app that shows route locations in real time.

“There are a couple apps in the App Store that do things like it, but most of them just give a scheduled time and that’s it,” said Sanche, a 20-year-old computer science student at the University of Saskatchewan.

Daniel Sanche, 20, is a second­year computer science student at the University of Saskatchewan who designed an app to show the predicted locations of Saskatoon bus routes in real time.

“With this one I wanted to really fine-tune it.” Using data from Google Maps and
the official schedules, he grouped together all the necessary information to display the expected position of each bus on a map.

“It’s just a prediction of where the bus should be so you don’t have to figure that out for yourself,” he said.

The app was release a couple weeks ago and has received about 350 downloads, averaging 20 per day, said Sanche. He added that so far the feedback has been positive, with many requests coming in for an Android version.

“I would consider doing that if it gets popular enough,” he said.

One more expansion he has considered is incorporating GPS tracking capabilities to make the maps as accurate as possible, which is something the City of Saskatoon is testing out for themselves.

However, with summer long gone and midterms approaching, Sanche has enough on his plate before he takes on another big project.

“I have lots of app ideas that I want to get to, but for now I’m just focusing on school,” he said.

To read the article on Metro's website, please click here