After working hard behind the scenes and listening to customer feedback over several years, Metro is in test mode on a beta version of our online trip planner – one that has an interactive map and many of the features riders have been asking for.
Did we say interactive map!? We sure did.
This version of the trip planner incorporates most every feature and function customers have requested over the years. But before it’s ready for prime time, we need customers to run it through its paces. Take a look at our beta-test site and send us feedback or comments via the “give feedback” button.
Our current online trip planner helps riders find the right regional transit itinerary more than 400,000 times each month. The feature people have requested most is a map – which in our new trip planner is front and center, making it easier to find locations, destinations and bus stops.
The improvement in tools and interface still draws on the same data and search engine.
Features
- Plan a trip by typing in an address, choosing a landmark or clicking a point on a map.
- Multiple modes of travel can be specified (such as, Local & Express Bus, Rapid Transit, Water Taxi and Rail)
- Find out the next departure times for a specified stop.
- Display and print a route schedule for a specific day.
- View stops and route maps on the interactive map.
- Quickly find your way to/from landmarks in the region.
The beta version is intended for external testing of the trip planner in order to collect comments and suggestions from users. Please note that this beta version is not the final version of the product and therefore Metro cannot guarantee an absence of errors. This version has not been optimized for mobile use, but we are working on it. For the best user experience the Beta Trip Planner is best viewed in newer browsers, such as Firefox, Chrome, or IE 9+ on a desktop or laptop/notebook computer.
It’s great that King County has included coverage for agencies that haven’t yet published a GTFS feed (including Community Transit and Everett Transit). But honestly, writing and maintaining custom trip planner software is a waste of public funds. There are already a number of generic trip planning tools freely available, and KC shouldn’t be in the business of writing and maintaining custom software for common problems.
Instead, I’d prefer that KC had simply helped other regional agencies get their data into the standard GTFS format so that their data could be incorporated into other trip planning services…and after that, the remaining funds should have been directed towards real transit service improvements that only KC can provide.
Ho hum. Would have been interesting three years ago. Easier to just use Google for this.
Love the landmark feature! Very nice. Also did a good job with disambiguation of addresses. I did have some problems with a couple of things. When I planned a trip, then went back to edit the FROM: parameter, it didn’t override what was initially there. I had a trip from Morgan Junctioni to Pioneer square, then tried to edit it to be Bellevue to Pioneer square and it defaulted back to Morgan Junction. I also had trouble with getting from 118th Ave. SE, Bellevue to Pioneer square. It came up blank, although there are a number of routes that run nearby. Thanks and good luck with this! Great feature!