I’ve enthused here before about what a game changer the Open Trip Planner is.
TriMet has just announced that their implementation, which has been in beta for a number of months (and which many folks I know use as their first choice for a trip planning) is now released in production.
Happy trips!
18 responses to “Open Trip Planner Goes Production at TriMet”
If you use a date of 9-2-12 or beyond in the new trip planner, you’ll see trips based on the new schedules that TriMet says aren’t released yet.
Proof:
http://i49.tinypic.com/2guiq02.jpg (711×1600, 1.2 MB, Note: image degradation done by image hosting provider after uploaded, I guess they don’t like PNGs.)
TriMet: The cat is out of the bag; please release the new schedules. I’m not the only one asking.
http://rantingsofatrimetbusdriver.blogspot.com/2012/08/your-honor-may-i-present-exhibit-a.html
I helped out with this project as a member of the OpenStreetMap project, and I gotta say, couldn’t be more enthusiastic about this. Moving to Tulsa permanently, and plan on seeing if I can get on with Tulsa Transit to repeat the Open Trip Planner success here at the MTTA.
I am a little surprised, though, that live positioning of transit vehicles wasn’t included in the live version, though it was in the closed beta.
Hi Paul,
Actually, live vehicle positions are in there… it’s just a little tricky to find them. First you have to select one or more bus routes under the “TriMet Routes” tab at the bottom left (rail is not supported right now), then click the little bus icon that appears in the toolbar on the top next to the ticket outlets button. Live vehicle positions should show up as moving arrows if that service is running.
Thanks Paul, and thanks for the spreading the word, Chris!
Mele Sax-Barnett
TriMet GIS
The live vehicles were on the old map, too. They are a little hard to find since the icon didn’t/doesn’t show until a bus route is clicked. A better UI might be to have it there all the time and give a warning that a bus route needs to be clicked when one isn’t.
Also, to answer a question I’ve seen, I believe C-TRAN has a (text-only) trip planner that includes TriMet service. And, I’ve created a by-stop live vehicle mapper. Unlike the trip planner, it can show MAX vehicle locations.
Moving to Tulsa permanently, and plan on seeing if I can get on with Tulsa Transit to repeat the Open Trip Planner success here at the MTTA.
They should. I heard about transit in Tulsa, their outreach efforts, and the ridership climate at the 2012 APA Conference. And it’s great to see that somebody somewhere is getting funding for increased service:
http://tulsatransit.org/2012/06/tulsa-city-budget-give-more-money-to-improve-routes/
(Tulsa was also where my favorite movie was flimed, but it has nothing to do with transit.)
Let’s also remember that TriMet ran much more service in previous years. I wonder how much higher the record ridership would’ve been for the last fiscal year if TriMet didn’t make all those service eliminations.
Live vehicle positions should show up as moving arrows if that service is running.
Hopefully Howard Payne isn’t reading this.
Does this system base its trips on distance or travel time. I asked it about going from my place near Alameda school to Swan Island. It sent me up to Alberta on the 9 to get the 72…an option I use once in a while, but consider slow.
Now that there is an 85 stop on Broadway just down from Leftbank Lofts, why not the 9 to there and then the 85?
Likewise with a bike/transit combo…it sent me up to Alberta for a 72. Why not straight down Knott/Russell to the 85 at Interstate & Albina? That’s all downhill and then five more minutes to Swan Island. Maybe its doesn’t know about the 85!
I remember getting a call once from a new employee on the Island who was directed to take MAX from Beaverton to 82nd for a transfer to the 72! Nothing against the 72, but why not grab the 85 at the Rose Quarter TC. I don’t trust these things.
Lenny, it should be based on the full set of TriMet schedules.
directed to take MAX from Beaverton to 82nd for a transfer to the 72!
At least with the old trip planner (I’m hoping they solved this problem), if you used “arrive by” it would give odd-looking results because it seemed to focus on getting you to the destination as closest to the chosen time as possible.
BTW, they’ll have to get the evening shuttle in the data.
Jason, the September schedules in the new trip planner are built from the preliminary data, which is generally not used for public information.
Schedules and maps for September will be available by the end of the day tomorrow. The text-based trip planner will get data no later than Friday night.
Schedules and maps for September will be available by the end of the day tomorrow.
Thank you for your answer. I appreciate it!
Maybe its doesn’t know about the 85!
It’s in there; I used 4012 SE 17th Ave. as a hypothetical starting point and a stop on Basin Ave. as a hypothetical destination, it successfully provided trip information using the 85.
I remember getting a call once from a new employee on the Island who was directed to take MAX from Beaverton to 82nd for a transfer to the 72! Nothing against the 72, but why not grab the 85 at the Rose Quarter TC. I don’t trust these things.
I have some similar stories (should note that I’d already planned my trip from East Portland to Rock Creek using traditional trip planning methods), one involving the trip planner telling me to take the 19 through Downtown and all the way back out to Gateway before pick up the MAX to Beaverton. Usually the trip planner gives other options; selecting one of them sometimes gives more sane results.
I don’t trust these things.
Me either!
TriMet cannot give out schedule info on the Swan Island Evening Shuttle as its operated by a contractor. I think this is due to the labor contract. Questioners are directed to the Swan Island Bus. Assoc. that manages the service.
OTOH, TriMet works with SIBA to be sure that all stops on Swan Island and the ES stop at the RQTC are well signed. So not sure if they can put the ES schedule into the database for their trip planner.
Lenny,
If SIBA can publish the schedule as GTFS, TriMet and others can consume it for a variety of online tools. We have a company here in town (Trillium Solutions) that specializes in helping small transit operators do this.
Thanks Chris. I’ll see what I can do on this.
One other thing:
Will the old, text based trip planner be retired? Besides people with slow connections or old computers, the text trip planner can do more things like give a schedule of all trips stopping near a certain place.
Also, /images/nextarrivalsicon-16.gif is missing and is used by the “by destination” option of http://www.trimet.org/go/cgi-bin/sched.pl ; /v3/js/selectWhen2.js is missing too.
Short answer, Jason McHuff: NO. It’s not only a question of people without adequate bandwidth but also for accessibility. People using screen readers like Jaws require text and can’t use graphics-based pages like the map.
Paul, when you get to Tulsa, please get in touch with me and the others in the Tulsa Web Devs. We’ve been working for over a year to get the Tulsa bus schedule into GTFS.
See:
https://github.com/tulsawebdevs/tulsa-transit-google
http://tulsawebdevs.org/
http://tripplanner.tulsawebdevs.org/opentripplanner-webapp/index.html#/