GO Transit has launched a new website interface and an online trip planner. The changes create a much more friendly interface and include a variety of new features which will make the site more useful to both regular commuters and occasional users. Interestingly, the GO logo now prominently includes the phrase “A Division of Metrolinx.”
Perhaps the most exciting feature of the new site is the Google Maps trip planner positioned in the bottom right corner of the new homepage. GO is clearly very excited about this new feature and has been quick to promote it as a significant improvement in their customer service experience. The planner certainly is a nice new feature and definitely seems like a welcome alternative to selecting from schedules based on their sometimes-confusing route names. Now, visitors to the region no longer need to make the mental connection between a trip to Brampton and a route called the Georgetown Line.
GO’s place among the first transit agencies in the area to release its schedule information to Google (only YRT and the Hamilton Street Railway have also added the service) has, however, created some oddities in the results the service provides. Because GO is the only data Google has for Toronto, trips that would make much more sense on the TTC are instead routed along suburban GO routes. Some quick experimenting showed us two examples of ridiculous directions now available. A search for a route from between our office on Spadina Avenue to the intersection of Yonge and Sheppard, for instance, suggested a two hour sojourn via Milton. Another search between Spacing and UTSC suggested a route through Richmond Hill. This information would certainly be confusing for out-of-towners.
The TTC has said it will provide its schedule information to Google. The sooner they do this, the sooner that Google transit can be an effective tool for people in the GTA.
Suggested route from Downtown to Yonge and Sheppard: Train to Milton then 401 bus
Downtown to U of T Scarborough suggested route: Richmond Hill Bus from Union to Pickering 407 bus
Apart from the trip planner, the website contains several other interesting new features. A live version of the Union Station departure board can be accessed, allowing people to check departure information before they get to the station. Links to improvement projects such as the Union revitalization have been made clearer and online versions of schedules and maps have been added without the need to download PDFs.
Another interesting feature is the new section called “Leave your car at home.” This page provides information about GO’s bicycle accommodations and a clear statement about when bikes are allowed on GO trains. A link to the website Bikes and Transit provides information about routes to and from stations while further links to connecting transit agencies offers tips on reduced fares for connecting journeys, something which is often not well advertised.
All in all, GO’s new website is a much improved customer experience and seems to better take into account the complexity of the integrated role the agency can play beyond its traditional territory of rush-hour commuters. Increasing and clarifying information about how to connect with local transit systems and with cycling routes will help make GO a more practical way to travel throughout the GTA and reflects the agency’s increasingly pivotal role in regional transportation.
29 comments
Despite the oddities caused by the absence of TTC information, I found that if one attempts a trip served by agencies that Google has data for, one gets reasonable results.
From Toronto to various points in Hamilton, for example, one can get multi-carrier routes, and the proposed trip adjusts to allow for schedules in effect at the time one plans to travel. Walking and transfer times are also included.
Memo to TTC: You really need to justify the development of your own trip planner. Yes, Google does not have options such as “make my trip accessible” or “don’t use the subway”, but it seems to know it’s way around.
I noticed the release of info last Friday on Google. I hit the “transit” button to get from Downtown to near York Mills and Yonge, and the trip it was suggesting was wild!
In addition to YRT and HSR, Guelph is already on Google Transit and Waterloo Region (Grand River Transit) is getting it soon.
In my opinion, this is the best feature of Google Transit — seamless integration of different transit agencies. I hope the TTC is working on it.
I tried the trip planner using my childhood home in Swansea and the Crossroads Christian Centre in Burlington.
The trip planner suggested walking to Jane St. then to take the bus to Applewood (up in York region territory), then transfer to the 407 service to Oakville station, then take a 20-minute ride to
Burlington and walk the remainder of the way.
It amazes me to think that someone would actually believe that suggested route. Granted, some GO stations are hard to get at by transit but this really makes me wonder.
I’m very impressed with the combination of Google Transit integrating different agencies and GO putting it on its home page. The result is that you can go to the GO page and end up, as I just did, with a recommended route that mixes two different transit systems. Nice.
Using Google Transit is a wonderful idea but what happens when it goes down? There are good reasons to develop this kind of stuff in-house, because if GT does go down, you aren’t left in a total lurch.
The go trip planner is nonsense. I put in to travel from Oshawa to Oakville and all options are by bus -no mention of the direct train,and I am asked which Oakville I wnt to travel to in Ont or several in the US. What rubbish!
Seems like Google Maps really needs a warning when you start (or end) your trip in an area where they don’t have route info for all transit providers. It’d be like building a driving directions app using only even-numbered highways. Unless you know the limitations, good results are pure luck.
But, the TTC could sure help them (and GO) out by putting a little more haste into getting their info up on Google Maps. The transit feature wasn’t invented yesterday.
I must say trip planner works like magic and I loved it! and just so everyone knows the trip planner is also in ttc.ca 😉
I’m surprised to read that schedules that don’t require PDFs are new to the GO web site; I’ve been using them for at least four years now.
I thought TTC was providing the data to google at the same time they were rolling out their in-house trip planner. If they have sent out the data, they’d be wise to say so, so that people stop blaming them for any delays in google’s implementation.
Of course if they haven’t yet provided the data, they should do it already!
The GO map (under “Schedules & Maps” > “Go Service Map”) is full of copyediting errors, especially in the French text, which is kind of embarrassing for a Canadian public agency. Because I’m a huge dork, I emailed GO about this a long time ago, but I guess my email never reached anyone who can actually read French.
TTC can and should look at their own trip planner if GT does not provide necessary information to their customers. If, for example, GT does not show accessible-only routes, that’s important for TTC because of their wish to have more people use the main system rather than wheeltrans which is hugely expensive per-ride.
That however is no excuse for why it is now nearly 4.5 years since the Commission was first asked to provide data to GT.
Mark, the data google transit needs was not available 4.5 years ago. If google was so keen to have it, they could have gone out and done the geocoding themselves instead of relying on tax dollars and public agencies to provide them with content to monetize.
Hmm… not sure how many tax dollars it would take for TTC to provide their data — more than pushing a button obviously, but I bet Google does a lot of massaging of the data they receive to adapt to what the different transit companies can provide. Would you do all that work if you couldn’t get the info officially from the source? I suspect the TTC is lagging more out of political reasons (i.e., we have our own trip planner, well, we will, it’s coming, truly it is…) Or sheer incompetence if I’m to believe all the vitriolic criticism of the TTC that’s going on in your city. (Which makes me love the STM all the more, by the way.)
As for GO’s site being in French: well, I’m impressed, even with the mistakes. The AMT, Montréal’s equivalent of GO, has no English on their website except a splash page and their board of directors… strange given that their most popular lines serve the West Island which is predominantly English-speaking. But hey, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that 20h15 means 8:15 p.m. or that Est means East, now does it? Besides, Google has all info for greater Montreal, and the STM’s own trip planner includes AMT info.
@Corey Burger:
Are you suggesting that the TTC website has better uptime than Google? One’s on a server somewhere in Toronto, and the other has data centers with giant server farms around the world.
Paul — The TTC operates for the public benefit, it is not a private profit making entity. It doesn’t matter who “monetizes” the gasins so long as the benefits to the public outweigh the costs to the taxpayer.
Making buses and stations accessbile to wheelchairs has resulted in increased profits to wheelchair manufacturers (their devices are now more useful), while costing the TTC a great deal. But the public benefit of increased mobility outweights the costs to the TTC — the wheelchair-makers profits are irrelevant.
A Citizen-centric TTC wouldn’t care who got the profits, so long as Torontonians were better off.
Tristou: I agree. It’s surprising that the GO map is in French at all, given that francophones make up something like 1% of the GTA population. There’s a case to be made for going English-only. But if they are going to put out bilingual materials, they have to do it properly. The current error-riddled map is an embarrassment.
@Tristou, as I understand it, in order for TTC to provide the data (geocoded location data for stops and routes) it had to go out and get GPS coordinates for everything. Not to overstate the issue, but that does take time and money. In contrast, schedule information should have been relatively easy to provide. I would like to see an announcement from TTC indicating that the appropriate data has or has not been handed off. Is Brad Ross reading?
(sorry, my last post on this topic I promise)
Google Transit (http://maps.google.com/help/maps/transit/partners/participate.html) is not even accepting new partners right now — they have a waiting list — so there’s no guarantee GT would have had a Toronto trip planner running before the city’s version.
@Paul, by now they should have this stop location data as the stop announcement works (or doesn’t as the case may be) using GPS data to link the bus to locations on the route.
In case people thought I was kidding about how long ago TTC were asked to do this (actually I was wrong, it was 4 years 2 months, bad me no cookie)
Minutes of Commission Meeting Dec 16 2005
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e) Google – Transit Trip Planner
Vice-Chair Giambrone advised that Google, in partnership with Portland Transit, had created a trip planning program for transit riders.
Vice-Chair Giambrone Moved That Staff Be Requested To Explore And Report Back On The Possible Implementation Of The Google Program At The TTC, Including The Associated Cost Implications.
The Motion By Vice-Chair Giambrone Carried.
——————————————-
It took six months for TTC to report back. One of those classic TTC reports which makes you want to know exactly how long it takes to make a couple of phone calls to Portland and Mountain View.
@Paul: Having written such software myself (http://hbus.ca), I can say categorically that there’s no way the TTC could have gotten their trip planner up and running without already having geocoded their stops. It’s just not possible to correlate transit stops with street-level addresses or landmarks otherwise. There’s no way around it: to make something like this work, you need to get the data into an appropriate format and Google Transit Feed Specification is as good as any.
Creating a Google Transit Feed should have been the _first_ thing that the TTC did while writing their own trip planner. The format is well documented and there’s tons of third party tools around it (to validate that the data is good, etc.). In doing so, they would have produced a solid foundation for writing their own software, as well providing something that others (google, myttc, whoever) could have used immediately.
This is exactly the approach Kieran Huggins and Kevin Branigan took with myttc.ca and it’s no coincidence that they managed to get a product out two years before the TTC (with almost certainly far less in the way of time and resources).
It’s fair for the TTC to say that they needed to write their own trip planner to satisfy accessibility requirements. It’s also fair to criticism them (and their suppliers) for so clearly dropping the ball when it comes to the actual software engineering. There’s absolutely no excuse for it having taken so long to create such a substandard product.
William, I agree with you. I have discovered that in fact TTC has not yet put their data in Google’s hands. So the criticisms are fully justified, and I can no longer play “angel’s advocate”. They screwed the pooch on this, and they should publicly acknowledge it and fix it ASAP.
The main limitation of GO’s data right now os that it doesn’t include all bus stops – only those which appear in the paper schedules. (Exceptions: Lakeshore West and 407 routes). That means if your start point is more than 15 mins walk form a timing point, no route shows – even if there’s a stop next door!
I can understand GO wanting to get something out the door, but their website says they won’t have all stops available until spring 2011! That’s waaay too long.
Anotehr thing: nothing on GO’s swebiste about making the GTFS data publically available (like YT and Guelph)… which makes me think they won’t. 🙁
(Sorry about back-to-back posts)
Tom: GO’s trip planner doesn’t even include all scheduled bus stops. I couldn’t find major stops such Shoppers World (found in Table 31) or Bramalea City Centre (Tables 31, 33, 34, though YRT’s trip planner shows a stop there for the co-operated Route 77). The Downtown Brampton GO bus terminal is not included, so clicking on the Station next to it only has train departures, and none of the train-buses (nor the Queen Street local runs or the runs to Orangeville). Some 407 stops (that are not GO Stations) also don’t show up, like the Hurontario/407 park and ride.
Unfortunately, this rollout was really half-baked.
I actually just started working on a scraper last night for Go Transit’s data. It turned out to be easier than I imagined (having not previously written a scraper). I’m planning on coercing the scrapings into a publicly available GTFS data. Any unavailable additional stop data could be added and verified.
http://www.gotransit.com/publicroot/en/schedules/developerresources.aspx