Metro Introduces TripFinder beta for St. Louis Mass Transit
One of the more challenging things for a new transit rider is trying to figure out how to get from A to B on the bus or light rail. I know the #40 Broadway bus route well enough now to get from my house to downtown with ease but beyond that I’m pretty much in the dark.
Metro now has the TripFinder service available in beta form on their site (click here). I tried out a few different places originating from my house and it worked pretty well. In each case it gave me several choices and showed me in detail how much I’d be walking and the total time spent traveling.
The system lets you change assumptions about walking speed so if you are faster walker you can adjust this to your own rate. If you do as I have done and bike to the bus and take your bike with you then you can simply adjust the walking rate to be something closer to what you’d bicycle.
You can also save locations that you frequent. I’m glad this is available as I think it will help people transition away from auto dependence. I’ve added this link to my links on the right side under ‘St. Louis Area Resources’. Now if only it existed in some kiosks at the bus stops…
– Steve
This needs some work, but Metro’s on the right track (pardon the pun).
Another cool thing that Denver, Portland and other cities offer is the ability to download schedules into a PDA – check out http://www.rtd-denver.com and click on “wirelss”, plus check out their “trip planner” . . .
Still doesn’t do much good if you are standing at Kingshighway & Chippewa and want to know how to get downtown. WE NEED SYSTEM MAPS. They should be posted at each bus shelter and available as pamphlets all over the place. How can we expect people to change their minds about mass transit if Metro can’t do something so simple? They are only recently available but you have to go to Metro’s office at the convention center to get one. WTF?
I agree that we need the maps as well! The schedules are okay if you use one bus line. When you use others it can get confusing and a map would be great! I enjoy their online system the have now. It is a “step” in the right direction!
Ironically, they took down the system map and schedules during the implentation of the beta.
How tranportation planners don’t understand the web as an architected environment escapes me, but I have yet to see a well executed public transportation site.
When gasoline gets up to $5 a gallon, maybe then we’ll see some traction (no pun intended) on customer service oriented public transportation.
Right now, I suspect most of our midwestern brethren view the inconveniences as a means of disincetivizing poverty by punishing the working poor ridership. As well as those few hippy-dippy, Chicken Little, tree-hugging, commie, pinko new urbanists.
It’s always strange to me that when I take the bus to a meeting or ride my bicyle, I might as well have taken a dirigible, so foreign a concept is transportation designed for sustainability.
Incidentally, Metro (http://www.nanika.net/Metro), a freeware subway scheduling program for the Palm, has actually had the Metrolink schedule up for sometime – not sure if it’s been kept up to date, but pretty handy generally.
I plugged in my address in Webster and it told me it would take 1 1/2 hours to get downtown. I have a bus stop literally right in front of my house (#47 cross-county), yet it told me to walk almost 40 minutes to some stop on S. Rock Hill. This new service may be working for some people, but looks like I’ll be figuring out my trips the old-fashioned way.
As for maps and schedules at major stops . . . bottom line, they cost money that Metro can better spend keeping buses on the road. Plus schedules are available on most buses for the routes they run. One answer may be either selling a system book and/or using advertising to help subsidize this information, as other some systems do. I am surprised they eliminated the system map from the website – it’s essentially a no-cost item, other than the cost of updating it.
One slightly weird thing about the beta is that it comes back with multiple options and lists a bunch of intermediate stops that likely are of little or no interest to someone just trying to get from point A to point B . . . KISS!
Considering that Bi-State did not develop the software that drives the Trip Planner in house and purchased this from an outside vendor (evident from that they didn’t change all the verbage in the user-facing documentation from what it was “out of the box”), I wonder how much wiggle room they have to adjust the software in regards to how it generates routes. I’ve seen it make some fairly goofy routing decisions for simple trips I’ve taken.
The entire transit system in St. Louis reflects a lack of attention to details. Bus shelters need system maps and schedules, at the very least for the lines serviced by that stop. Bus stop signs need to display at minimum the frequency at which a bus would arrive. MetroLink stops need easily viewed train and bus system maps, instead of an 8.5″ by 11″ timetable sheet. Right now you’ll step off a train only knowing the numbers of intersecting bus lines, and that’s it. The website was awful even before; at least now it’s improved in that one can look at a bus timetable without having to wait for a huge PDF document to load.
Instead, the image that they project is that yes, there are buses and trains running here, but the concept of getting people onto them is a mere afterthought.
What company provides your transit system benches and shelters? My company specializes in unique and functional benches and shelters that from the sound of it would work very well in St. Louis.
^Wall USA
I can’t post a link because the spam filter will not allow a (dot)de (Denmark) address.
Try: http://www.wall(dot)de/index_us.html
The Metro System Map is still available on the web site, at:
http://www.metrostlouis.org/MetroBus/SystemMap.asp
It’s linked right there on the drop-down list under “Maps, Schedules & Info”
Likewise the PDF schedules are still up, complemented by the timetables generated out of the TripFinder system.
But I agree the TripFinder function needs some work. One-size-fits-all solutions ain’t always the best.
I’ve heard Metro does plan to release all the schedules in a single book, after the completion of Metro Redefined, the plan to redo much of the bus system in tandem with the opening of Cross County MetroLink.
The latest printed System Map I have dates from August 2005; I think they still have some copies at the MetroRide Store, 7th & Washington downtown.
There’s plenty of room for legitimate criticism of Metro; but it’s best to be fully informed when making such critiques.