Give the CTA a medal, or a pony, for Train Tracker

The Chicago Transit Authority released the Train Tracker API to developers with little fanfare. But it’s some high-quality stuff. At least this guy thinks the documentation is excellent*:

“Dear CTA: please give whoever wrote the Train Tracker API docs a medal, or a pony, or something. Thanks.” Original tweet by cieslak.

I think they got the message. You can bet they asked for the pony.

*I haven’t taken a look at the Train Tracker API documentation, but I did review the Trademark/Branding Guidelines for developers. It’s very clear how you should and shouldn’t use the CTA name and service marks and graphics. I also had a sneak preview in December 2010 of the Train Tracker website, to give user feedback. I was shocked and impressed to find that it worked on my Samsung Slash, a remarkably dumb phone that happens to be able to run Opera Mini (see photo below). The API wasn’t available until June 2011.