Stony Brook University’s Mobility and Parking Services (MAPS) announced the launch of its new transportation tracking app, ETA Spot. Earlier this year, MAPS revealed it would no longer use its previous system, DoubleMap.
In an email to The Statesman sent Jan. 31, George Volz, the director of transportation, shared the reasoning behind the decision to no longer work with the company behind DoubleMap, TransLoc.
“In December 2024, DoubleMap’s technology was discontinued as it was acquired by another company. Throughout 2024, our team was actively seeking a new transportation technology provider to better serve our campus community, with implementation planned for early 2025,” Volz wrote. “Instead of entering a new, annual agreement with DoubleMap’s successor, we opted to expedite the launch of our new transit technology for the Seawolf community.”
Cyndi Raskin, a marketing manager at TransLoc, wrote in an email to The Statesman on Jan. 21 that the company had intended to retire DoubleMap and RealTime systems in 2023 in attempts to evaluate and improve their quality.
“This strategic decision was made with a clear objective: to provide customers with the best transit technology solutions available in the marketplace,” Raskin wrote. “TransLoc collaborated closely with each DoubleMap and RealTime customer to ensure a seamless transition to the TransLoc Fixed Route platform.”
“To ensure [Stony Brook] provided the best solutions to student riders and dispatchers, [they] issued a request for proposal to the market and awarded a contract to an alternate vendor,” she continued.
Raskin expressed her gratitude towards Stony Brook for using DoubleMap and for the responses received from the Stony Brook community.
“TransLoc appreciates the positive feedback it has received over the years from [Stony] Brook University students and transit department personnel,” Raskin wrote. “TransLoc hopes in the future to return to serving Stony Brook University’s student population.”
Kendra Violet, the executive director of parking and transportation, sent an email on Monday, March 10 to students, faculty and staff disclosing that ETA Spot is still in development but can track buses in live time.
“Although we’re still working on building additional features and functions in the app, live bus tracking is available and ready to use,” Violet wrote. “More features are coming soon, including personalized trip alerts, live occupancy numbers for each bus, automatic vehicle announcements for each bus stop, and more, which will assist all riders.”
MAPS officials, in an email to The Statesman, listed a few of the features of ETA Spot that riders can look forward to.
“Beyond being able to track our fleet of buses in real-time, riders can look forward to: The new app will have the capability of displaying real-time occupancy for each bus,” the email read. “While riding, the new system enables our shuttle fleet to utilize automatic vehicle announcements for each bus stop which will help our visually impaired riders, as well as those who are new to the Stony Brook shuttle system.”
The statement continued, “Behind the scenes the new system will also provide our team with more accurate ridership data and enhanced reporting, which will allow us to better analyze information and ultimately make changes that support our campus transit needs.”
MAPS officials also noted that riders can submit feedback through ETA Spot itself or reach out to [email protected] to suggest future improvements. The rollout is expected to be finished by the end of the academic year.
“We plan to finish building the app during the remainder of this academic year, and continue testing any additional features over the summer,” MAPS stated. “The final version of the app should be available for the Stony Brook community when the Fall semester begins.”
