Plan a trip with conventional transit schedules and maps in just SEVEN (count ‘em) easy steps!
I work with transit schedules and maps on a daily basis, and, of course, my clients are transit agencies, and my colleagues are other transit consultants or vendors. As “transit people,” it’s easy to forget to forget that conventional schedules and maps aren’t clear or easy to use for regular people (more on that here).
I’ve been including a slide like this one in most of my presentations. This shows all seven steps necessary to plan a trip from my apartment in Portland, OR to the 16th Anual Northwest Tribal Transportation Symposium in Jantzen Beach last week. And this example is a comparative piece of cake — there are only two legs of the trip, both on the same agency’s service, TriMet, that offers easy-to-use maps and timetables. (Of course, passengers can also plan trips on TriMet at maps.google.com and maps.trimet.org.)
It’s easy, right!?!
Online information and its effect on ridership
The connection between easy-to-use customer information (schedules, maps, etc.) and transit ridership seems obvious. And online tools provide a powerful way to make transit information easier to use (remember: unfamiliar transit riders find conventional maps and schedules difficult to use; in fact, in one study, they failed to plan trips about half of the time).
I am searching for, and cataloging, studies and accounts of online transit information and its potential, or observed, impacts on ridership.
Today, I turned up “The Effect of ITS on Transit Ridership” (Abdel-Aty, Mohamed A.; P.P. Jovanis. ITS Quarterly. Vol. III. 1995). Unfortunately, the article is old (1995) and the ITS Quarterly is not published online. But the literature review paper (“The Factors Influencing Transit Ridership: A Review and Analysis of the Ridership Literature”) gives a few highlights:
ITS-delivered transit information might encourage shifts to transit: 58.7 percent of respondents were likely to use transit at least once per week given the availability of ITS-delivered transit information, and about half of the non-transit users who might consider transit would be more likely to use it if certain information items were available.
I wish the whole paper was available. Does anyone know of other research on the connection between online information, or customer information in general, and ridership?
Of websites, customer information and short-range transit plans
Recently, someone directed me to look the Santa Cruz Metro 2007-2008 Short Range Transit Plan.
One of its features is an evaluation of the Santa Cruz Metro website based on the results of a web-based public survey.
As part of the planning process, it makes a lot of sense to evaluate websites, and other components customer information, both offline and online, and discuss how they fit into an agency’s strategic goals. I believe customer information should be treated as an integral part of good transit service, not a separate, tacked-on component (see earlier blog post: Customer information: not a side dish but part of the main course).
The “Metro Website Evaluation” section makes some good, if obvious, recommendations on how to improve their website and online strategy: create a fast-loading, visually-pleasing, and user-friendly website; include the URL on printed materials and get partners to link to scmtd.com from their sites.
The document points out that “nearly half of passengers using the system are between the ages of 18-23″ (most are likely students at UC Santa Cruz) and that a modern, full-featured website necessary to serve these customers well. In addition, I would point out that this demographic presents some additional opportunities in the online space: College students like to have fun, so partnering with local event calendars to include transit directions, like Trillium helped make happen in Humboldt County, would make a lot of sense. Some transit agencies are reaching out on social networks like Twitter and Facebook to recruit new riders and build rider community and brand identification. That might make sense for SC Metro, because 85% of college students use Facebook.
Despite the inclusion of the website evaluation, online information strategy could have been better integrated in the overall document. The on-board survey of 1902 riders conspicuously did not include questions like “Do you have access to and use the internet… at home? work? school?,” “How often do you use the internet?”, or “What kind of mobile communications device do you carry? – [none, iPhone, Blackberry, cell phone, other, etc.]“
Arizona Daily Sun (Flagstaff, AZ): “Map out bus trip on Google Transit”
In January, Trillium client Mountain Line in Flagstaff became the first transit agency in Arizona in Google Transit.
Today, Mountain Line staff forwarded me an article from the Arizona Daily Sun about the trip planner. It’s great to see transit agencies take advantage of Google Transit as a publicity opportunity, and Mountain Line is doing a terrific job.
Americans are fascinated by technology, and everything “green” is a major issue these days. Realizing that opportunity, Mountain Line is making Google Transit a major theme in their earth day marketing & publicity.
They’re doing something clever to lure prospective riders to experience how easy it is to plan trips with Google Transit — holding a raffle for a new Dell Inspiron Mini 9 Notebook. People are directed to the Mountain Line website to enter, where they are greeted by a prominent trip planner form. Very nice.
Half the battle to recruit more transit riders is to get prospective riders to look at schedules and maps to see if transit can work for them. This takes time and effort with conventional schedules, but Google Transit plans trips in 15 seconds. Some people even describe using it as “fun.”
Anecdotally, after Google Transit launched for Humboldt County, I heard of people planning a lot of potential trips just so they could get a feel for where transit could take them. These people, now aware of transit, are much more likely to think of it for a potential trip, or turn their friends onto transit and help them plan trips.
I am looking forward to seeing how Mountain Line’s Earth Day campaign and contest goes and what impact it has.
Trillium’s role between Google and our transit agency clients
Recently, I’ve been thinking about the role Trillium plays with rural, small, and mid-sized transit agencies.
The Trillium services page shows that we help publish data in the Google Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) to submit to Google for inclusion in the Google Maps/Transit.
But, when Trillium started marketing GTFS publishing services, I didn’t understand that we provide an additional and necessary service in our role as an advisor to our small agency client, and a liason between them and Google. Now, I realize that this is a very important functions of this firm.
Here are examples of what I mean:
- We’re usually on the front lines of answering questions like “Why is Google offering this free to transit agencies?,” “How long will it take to include our information in Google Maps?”, etc.
- We explain the constraints of, and issues with, Google Maps/Transit to our clients, answering questions about maximum walking distances, and any issues that show up with non-transit information like street address and business locations, or road network inaccuracies. A lot of transit agencies have questions and need clarification on how transit data works within Google Maps and what part of the data and user experience they can control. In fact, we’re going to start work on some FAQ documents to answer common questions for our clients.
- Many of the small and/or rural transit agencies that Trillium approaches and works for operate services that are a little different from typical urban fixed routes. Recognizing this need, I’ve gone back to the Google Transit Feed Spec changes group (an electronic forum of developers who publish and use GTFS information) to communicate the need to represent flexible and demand-responsive services in GTFS.
- Small and rural agencies also tend to operate more loop routes, which are uncommon in metropolitan systems. I brought up a few issues with the way loop routes are displayed in Google Transit. I don’t know if it was related to this feedback, but not long after, Google Maps/Transit display of loop routes was improved.
- There are many other service features and needs Trillium’s clients have. Working for a variety of small, rural, and mid-sized transit agencies means that we notice the most common needs and re-tool our application and services to address them, or advocate on their behalf to Google for those needs to be addressed in the trip planner. This is an essential component of the work we are doing for on the Northern California Internet Trip Planner Feasibility Study right now.
As you can see, we’ve sort of fallen into (and embraced) a niche occupying the gap between Google and small agencies. We are continuing to explore how we can be most useful here.
Google Transit update: Loop routes show up more nicely
Another subtle, incremental update in the Google Transit trip planner showed up recently.
Today, I noticed that loop routes display more cleanly. A lot of rural and small agencies, in particular, operate routes where one vehicle travels continuously on a loop.
The way loops are represented in a Google Transit feed is as one route with many trips that start and end at the same location. The trips are assigned to the same “vehicle block” so that the trip planner (or another Google Transit Feed Spec consuming application) knows that the same vehicle operates each of the successive trips.
Up until a few weeks ago, if your query on Google Maps returned a transit itinerary that traversed the top of a cycle on a loop route, you would see two legs of a journey (on the same route). It looked a somewhat like this itinerary in Delano, CA:
It actually didn’t look exactly like this, because it would have showed an in-seat transfer, where the trip planner tells the passenger to stay-on-board as the vehicles continues as Route X. Unfortunately, I can’t replicate an in-seat transfer exactly as it was for a loop route because now the trip planner has been improved and won’t show it! (Also, note that I need to update the feed for Delano, CA/DART to add vehicle blocks for loop routes.)
Now, a loop route where a feed publisher has used blocks properly will display as one would expect. The route is shown as continuing seamlessly through the top of its cycle, with no mention of an in-seat transfer:
About three weeks ago, I brought up the ackward display of loop routes in the Google Transit Feed Spec Changes group. It’s always great to see the Google Transit team’s responsiveness to little issues like this.
Two years after: Google Transit for Humboldt County
Last Saturday, I presented at the Wheels of Change conference in Humboldt County, CA by video conference.
Trillium client Humboldt County was roughly the 17th area in North America to join Google Transit. Since that time, the main transit agency, Redwood Transit System, has posted a greater than 40% increase in ridership. They have one of the best farebox return ratios of any rural transit system in California.
Now there are more than 115 North American areas include in Google’s transit trip planner. It’s exciting to see and report this progress.
The audience was particularly interested in future possibilities for online transportation information. I showed Walkscore.com’s transit time maps, ByCycle.org, and Atlanta’s multi-modal trip planer, among other projects.
Customer information: not a side dish but part of the main course
Since the fundamental purpose of a transit agency seems to be putting transit vehicles on the street, it’s easy to assume that basic service provision is a much more important than providing information about that service.
Inspired by More Riders, I would argue that service provision and providing customer information are equally fundamental to serving a community and providing mobility options. “Customer information” is the term transit agencies use for their public-facing information — route & system maps, timetables, etc.
Even if an agency offers a great system from a planning and operations perspective — frequent, on-time service on a dense network of well-connected routes — if their customer information doesn’t do the job of helping people use and benefit from this system easily, then the system is under performing its potential in crucial ways — in rider satisfaction and the number of passengers transported to jobs and services, for example.
Consider software as an analogy. Even if you offer powerful, feature-rich software, if it’s difficult to use most people won’t benefit much from it. With software and with transit, ease-of-use is crucial to overall usefulness.
GetSatisfaction.com’s community webcast series
I am a fan of GetSatisfaction.com, a site where customers of companies and organizations can ask questions, share ideas, report problems, or give praise in a public forum. Other customers, as well as company representatives, can then answer those queries.
They’ve begun a “Community Webcast” series. I plan to attend a few and think about how this theme applies for public transit.
Their next webinar, Reducing Customer Service Support Costs by Turning to the Community, is tomorrow. Go sign up!
If you want to see an example of online community-powered support in action for transit, check out yesterday’s conversation on Humboldt Transit Authority’s unofficial GetSatisfaction forum. The discussion is about dogs and the bus. Here, riders have provided detailed information on the law, rules, and regulations. Not only is this at no cost to the agency, but providing a space for this sort of discussion may facilitate greater and broader understanding of and respect for the rules.
BART adds Developer App Center to bart.gov
One theme I noticed in the BART Mobile Applications Rider Survey results was that some respondents didn’t seem to be aware of the many 3rd party apps available for real-time alerts and trip planning on the BART system.
In an effort to help riders find the available tools, BART has provided links to many of the mobile and social apps available for their system through bart.gov’s Developer App Center.
One question I have, though, is why it’s called the Developer App Center. That makes it sound like it’s for developers, instead of end-users.
