If you’re a bus rider in Montreal you’ve probably used Tous Azimuts, the STM’s interactive trip planner. Though it’s a little rough around the edges visually, it’s a pretty thorough and effective service. It was also ahead of its time, launched in 1998, before most cities had an online trip planner. (In comparison, poor, vast Toronto still doesn’t have one, at least not an official one.)
I’ve used Tous Azimuts for years and found it quite helpful in my journeys to places I’ve never been before, but being a robot, it occasionally comes up with some real stinkers.
Recently I made a trip to Beaubien East, at Fabre. I used Tous Azimuts to find out what stop on the Beaubien bus route is closest to that corner. The first result told me that there is a stop right on the corner of Fabre, directly across the street from my destination. Perfect!
Then I scrolled down and saw the second result. It told me to take the Beaubien bus right past Fabre, get off at Papineau, then inexplicably take the Papineau bus south one block to Bellechasse, where I should get off and walk back to my destination — the one I’d already passed on the Beaubien bus.
The third suggestion told me to take the metro past Beaubien up to Jean-Talon station, where I’d catch the Bélanger bus east to Fabre, then walk nearly a kilometre south.
My guess is that the application creates several routes whether or not there are several sensible routes to be created. This isn’t really a bad thing, of course — it’s great to have alternatives. But when you’re familiar with the area you’re going to, it can lead to some chuckleworthy advice.
Have you ever been led astray by Tous Azimuts? Or are you a happy customer?
9 comments
I’m your first commenter on this blog, so welcome I guess :). I haven’t used that trip planner. I didn’t even know it existed, but I’m going to use it from now on. Thanks for the tip! I will get back to this post and tell you about my experience :)
I’ve used it quite a few times and generally it works very well.
It is kept up-to-date with the STM bus schedule changes (at least a few times a year). It could do with some feature upgrades such as: integration with STL & south shore bus networks.
It sometimes helps to type the bus stop number instead of the intersection.
True about the stop numbers, James. In fact, when I know what route I’m taking I typically use the AUTOBUS page, which gives you the next five buses at your stop. (I’ve used this by phone as well, but I find it so slow to use with menus and messages to get past.)
It would be nice if the Tous Azimuts system linked up with the suburban ones too — I found that the Laval site was quite easy to use the time I tried it.
I found out recently that the AMT has teamed up with Google Transit for their online trip-finder. This is the kind of setup the TTC in Toronto was looking into having, until apparently they couldn’t come up with the data/format that Google required.
I remember way back in the day, when no one had any idea when the bus or the metro was going to come. In my early teenage years, when meeting friends, let’s say at the Eaton Center for a movie on a Sunday (uh oh), I would leave at least an hour beforehand, even though the trip was only about 15 minutes long all in all. Because you never knew… You just had to hope that the metro would come “soon” so you could get to point B “on time”. Crazy days.
Then came the printed timetables, and finally the awkwardly named “tous azimuts” (shouldn’t it be Tout Azimut with a t? Sounds better, with the slur of the t to the a. anyway)
I’m so grateful for TA, even though as Julie mentioned, it can give you some pretty crazy itineraries (but the first or second suggestion are always right on).
I use it a lot when I have to combine bus+metro use, that way I can make the switch easily, without waiting too much, or missing the connection.
But the #1 STM service I use is typing in my bus stop # to get the next five buses. Way better than the phone (actually, apparently my bus stop doesn’t exist by phone…)
I’ve used it dozens of times and never has the top result steered me wrong (though sometimes I’ve preferred taking the second or third option). (At least not yet!)
I fully understand why there are some crazy possibilities that show up though. Basically what they must do is create a matrix of the possibilities of getting there at all and then time each. Then they sort them and output the fastest 3, even if some make little sense to a real human. So the fewer the options of actually getting there, the more likely you’ll end up with at least one bizarre route.
The results makes perfect sense if you know some of the computer science behind this kind of service. (You were definitely on the mark when you said it was ahead of its time because trip planning is still advanced stuff.) If you tried to spend extra time filtering out the crazy scenarios all the searches would be a lot slower. You’d be optimizing for the least likely scenarios which is rarely a good idea.
Lily, I believe it’s “tous” because the azimuts is plural. But I actually like it that way, because with the liaison you get a pleasing “toozaz” thing going on.
Guillaume, are you in GIS or a similar field? I imagine it’s immensely complicated to put this sort of system together. I understand from the site credits Tous Azimuts was made as part of a program with students at l’École Polytechnique. While it looks a bit Web 0.0 it’s pretty impressive that they haven’t had to update it in the last ten years. I wonder though if there are parts of the island with new roads that might not be on the map — I’m thinking of the Bois-Franc area in St-Laurent, which IIRC was just beginning to be built when I moved here in 1998.
I live in Pierrefonds and commute to McGill… the following is a route i received today to get downtown. It takes 4 hours 3 minutes:
Origin: 4329, rue Panet (Pierrefonds)
Destination: gare Centrale (gare)
Day: 04/06/2008, Preferred arrival time: 12h00
Walk penalty: no, Metro active: yes, Train active: yes
Trip duration: 243 minutes
Dep. Time* FROM Walk / route Arr. Time* TO
8h26 4329, rue Panet (Pierrefonds) Walk for 1000 metres 8h41 Arrêt / Stop Saint-Charles / Saint-Denis
8h41 Arrêt / Stop Saint-Charles / Saint-Denis
No du système AUTOBUS 58102
Autobus / Bus 201 Saint-Charles / Saint-Jean
dir. Nord
8h55 Arrêt / Stop Saint-Charles / Gare Beaconsfield
11h40 Gare Beaconsfield
Train Montréal/Dorion-Rigaud
dir. Est
12h14 Gare Lucien L’Allier
12h14 Gare Lucien L’Allier Walk for 975 metres 12h29 gare Centrale (gare)
I’ve used it for quite some time now mostly for planning bus routes to places I don’t know. (the MTL metro is so easy to use, but the busses are a pain to get around. especially to tourists.) It always worked quite well for me and offered me quite reasonable alternatives (I never look past the 3rd one).
I’ve studied in computer science and, yes it is a complicated task to put up a system like that. And the result is quite useful.
but.. As many pointed out, it was built in 1998 and, frankly, I’ve never seen any changes in the interface of “Tous Azimuts”. Personally, I think many things could be perfected or maybe modernized.
Also, it seems to get slower and slower. Maybe this problem is relative and I am the one expecting sites to load faster as I get faster Internet connections. But for what I think, it would be great if more servers were put up to work and maybe better connections to those servers to be able to cope with its growing use. Let’s just hope for them that the system behind this service permits expansion in terms of “horsepower”.
all of this would cost a lot of money though, to be a little realistic ^_^
I appreciate the fact that it looks Web 0.0, as it is useable for people who don’t have high speed access or powerful browsers. There are so many sites that are not accessible to all computer users – which would really make no sense for a site on access to public transport.