Laid-Off Engineer Builds Real-Time Transit Tracker

When a Seattle-area software engineer received a layoff notice earlier this year, the response was not a frantic job search but a keyboard-first pivot. Within weeks, the engineer had assembled a real-time tracking dashboard that pulls live positions for the state's trains, ferries, and select bus routes into a single, unified map. What began as a personal exercise in staying sharp has become a quietly useful tool for commuters who have long juggled half a dozen agency apps.

The project's foundation is deceptively simple: Washington's transit agencies already publish open data feeds, and the engineer simply aggregated them. That choice is the real story. It demonstrates how public data, once released, becomes raw material for citizen developers who can build better experiences than the agencies themselves often manage. The tracker is not a business yet, but it does not need to be — it is a proof of concept that the region's transit network is far more interconnected than its official interfaces suggest.

A Window Into Public Data

For transit agencies, the project is a free usability audit. It exposes where schedules are reliable, where ferries drift from their timetables, and where bus data goes dark. For commuters, it offers a single pane of glass that the fragmented official apps have never delivered. The broader lesson is that open data is a public asset, and the state's tech workforce is uniquely positioned to mine it.

Economically, the project is a microcosm of Washington's resilience. Layoffs in the tech sector have pushed thousands of engineers into a market where portfolios matter as much as résumés. Side projects like this one serve as job-search currency, demonstrating initiative and technical fluency to prospective employers. In the meantime, the state's transit riders gain a tool that no agency budget line item produced. It is a small, elegant reminder that the region's most valuable export may not be software — but the people who build it when they are not being paid to.