CalACT conference attendees can travel Earth-friendly, easily, with Google Transit
I’m planning to attend the March conference of the California Association for Coordinated Transportation in San Diego. When I was making my travel plans, I used Google Transit to figure out how to travel between the airport and conference location by public transportation, and to see which downtown hotel I could stay at and still conveniently access the conference and airport.
As I was doing this, I noticed that CalACT’s otherwise fine website and conference information page seemed to be missing something: a mention of public transit availability at Lindberg Field, San Diego’s airport. So, I created a transit trip planner form and sent it to the conference organizers to be included as part of the website. The form gives convenient transit directions from any point in San Diego (the airport is the default) to the conference hotel. The date/time values are set to midday the day before the conference, but they can be changed according to when someone’s flight arrives.
The result is shown to the right. You can see the implemented version of this trip planner form on the CalACT conference website.
I hope this helps attendees save a few bucks on travel to the hotel, reduce their carbon footprint, and add a little bit to San Diego MTS’s farebox revenue. And, who knows… maybe a few transit agency managers and staff will be inspired to implement Google Transit for their agency, and/or leverage Google Transit with strategies like transit trip planner forms in their local online events calendar or features to help webmasters link to transit with badges and simple transit directions forms.
This is powerful transit markeing — not only does an event-specific trip planner form suggest transit at the time when someone is thinking about making a trip, but provides all the tools and information to plan that trip in about 10 seconds.
SF Bay Area Ferry routes, schedules and walkshed map
This week, an interactive map of San Francisco bay ferry routes and schedules became available on the baycrossings.com homepage. The map shows schedules for all services departing or arriving at a particular ferry terminal if a user clicks it. In addition, the interactive map has three other map views to help travelers plan their trips. These show connecting transit services (BART and SF Muni) at the San Francisco Ferry Building, ferry gates (so you know where to catch your ferry), and a map that shows a few of the amenities in the ferry building.
Here’s what the map looks like before any buttons have been clicked:
And, after a route is selected, here’s a schedule:
The schedule data in this map comes out of information managed with Trillium’s WebSchedule application. One change in WebSchedule changes the schedule information shown in this map view, and in expored Google Transit Feed Specification information for Google Transit.
Trillium worked as a team with Viewpoint Geography to deliver this map for Bay Crossings using the flash Google Maps API. Bay Crossings maintains a shop that sells transit and ferry passes at the San Francisco ferry building, and publishes a monthly publication that features articles of interest on San Francisco Bay cultural, environmental and maritime issues. Bay Crossings, and this project in particular, are great examples of efforts to make transit information easier to use, reach new customers, and build and publicize a lifestyle brand around transit.
So, check out the map on the Bay Crossings website, and tell me what you think!
Google Transit + TV news = Good for a transit agency
The participation of one of my clients with Google Transit attracted the attention of the local T.V. news station recently. KIEM Channel 3 (Eureka, CA) reporter Scott Hurst covered Humboldt Transit Authority, Trillium and Google Transit recently.
Earning positive press is another great reason to join Google Transit, or embark on other online information projects. Examples like these are reminders that if your agency already participates in Google Transit, or if you’ve done something else that’s notable, it pays to let the world know about it.
Here’s the 1-and-a-half minute segment.
