Celebrating five years of tramTRACKER®

This month marks five years since Yarra Trams revolutionised real-time public transport information by introducing tramTRACKER.

After a successful trial on Route 59 during the 2006 Spring Racing Carnival the real-time arrival information was introduced across the Yarra Trams network. Our popular Jake mascot was seen on trams and stops across Melbourne as tramTRACKER stop ID's were introduced at every tram stop.

Initially available by phone call and SMS only the system was soon introduced to the Yarra Trams website and through mobile internet, but it was an iPhone application released in June 2009 which quickly became the most popular way of accessing real-time tram arrival information.

There are now more than 800,000 requests to tramTRACKER every month and approximately 73% of these are from the iPhone. SMS requests have decreased from 9.7% in January 2010 to just over 2% now while voice calls now represent just 1.3% of the total.

Mobile internet is still popular, accounting for 14.0% of all users while requests through the Yarra Trams website represent 5.9% of traffic. Desktop Gadgets/Widgets are also available for download and between them they have more than 4% of tramTRACKER market share.

More than 300,000 new clients have connected to tramTRACKER this year on the iPhone app or desktop Gadgets/Widgets.

The next major development in the real-time evolution is underway.  A mobile app for the Android operating system is currently being built, a new version of Corporate tramTRACKER for large CBD businesses is being developed and Passenger Information Displays will be upgraded across 2012 to show tramTRACKER information.