The transit authority for a chunk of the east side of the San Francisco Bay adds trans-bay Wi-Fi on buses: AC Transit, which handles Contra Costa and Alameda county transportation, is testing Wi-Fi starting next week, with a plan to have production service in the fall. A number of Bay Area transit authorities are testing or deploying Wi-Fi for commuters, which have commutes that probably are rivaled only by metropolitan Atlanta for duration and variability.
AC Transit would deploy Wi-Fi-based Internet access on 79 buses that cross the three lengthy bridges on the Bay: Dumbarton (I used to live near the east end of that bridge), San Mateo (a very windy bridge), and Bay (intersected by an island). The service will be free, and is funded by the state. The idea is to see if the bus could offer a competitive advantage with this amenity. The trips are long enough to get work down, bumpily, but short enough that a second battery wouldn't be needed.
The story in the San Francisco Chronicle notes that BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) is in talks to consider on-board Internet access, but there are no plans to move forward, the article says. (A Jim Allison is quoted about this; this is a different Jim Allison, also working for BART, than the one involved in the Capitol Corridor Internet access project.)
Anybody know how they are planning to do the backhual? That will be the tough/expensive part particulary thru the tunnel on the Bay bridge.
[Editor's note: I would suspect that it is all cell data, because there's almost certainly continuous cell coverage along the bridges, and I would guess there are antennas of various kinds inside the tunnels? --gf]