Author Archive
Sunday, January 6th, 2008
Blog Recommendation: Permanent Campaigns Consulting
If you’re interested in simple ideas that can improve the transit experience (likely if you’re reading Headway), the Permanent Campaigns Consulting blog is a great resource. Permanent Campaigns’ business is helping agencies communicate better with their riders (with the intent of increasing ridership), and their keen understanding of the landscape shows through in their consistently [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in Blogroll by Joe Hughes
Friday, November 16th, 2007
Using Google transit routing on the iPhone
As some people have noticed, right now it’s hard to get transit routing from Google Maps on iPhones, because Apple’s software grabs most Google Maps URLs and sends them to the built in Maps application. This situation will no doubt be improved in the future, but in the meantime, here’s a workaround. To get Google [...]
6 Comments » - Posted in Google Transit,Mobile by Joe Hughes
Tuesday, November 13th, 2007
Transit stops on your GPS
One of the biggest benefits of transit agencies making their raw schedule data publicly available, as TriMet and others have done, is that riders are free to do interesting things with the information that the agency itself might not have thought of or have taken the time to do themselves. Case in point: Brett Warden [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in Data Sharing,Google Transit Feed Spec,Mobile,Portland by Joe Hughes
Saturday, November 10th, 2007
Idea: Smooth ride incentives for drivers
One of the reasons why buses are sometimes less pleasant to ride than trains is that they’re much more likely to offer a jerky ride. This probably has a lot to do with the traction afforded by rubber tires and the unpredictability of the street traffic that buses travel in. Either way, when you’re on [...]
2 Comments » - Posted in Ideas,Operations by Joe Hughes
Saturday, November 10th, 2007
Idea: More memorable route names
Steve Offut over at CommuterPageBlog posted about how transit systems could benefit from more memorable route names: I’ll bet you there isn’t a single rider who can explain why those buses are called #2, why there are 6 different ones, why those particular letters of the alphabet are used, and why the 2W and 2T [...]
Comments Off - Posted in Ideas,Signage by Joe Hughes
Saturday, November 10th, 2007
Vancouver
Last week I embarked on a whirlwind tour of Vancouver to help announce the the addition of TransLink routing to Google Maps. It was fun to get a chance to see the town for the first time (on Halloween night no less—the apparent Canadian tradition of setting off small fireworks on that night made things [...]
Comments Off - Posted in Events,Google Transit,Vancouver by Joe Hughes
Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007
Google Maps now provides transit directions
Big news today: transit routing is now available side-by-side with driving directions on Google Maps! Here’s how it works: whenever you do a driving directions search on Google Maps in an area where Google has transit routing information, a “Take Public Transit” link appears at the top: Clicking on that link allows you to see [...]
Comments Off - Posted in Google Transit,Maps by Joe Hughes
Wednesday, August 1st, 2007
TriMet’s Transit Developer Resources
Last month, Portland, Oregon’s TriMet agency became one of the first transit agencies to open a dedicated site for third-party users of their data. This site (along with BART’s GTFS page) marks a milestone for the transit field, demonstrating that agencies are starting to understand the benefits of sharing their data with outside developers. To [...]
2 Comments » - Posted in Data Sharing,Google Transit Feed Spec,Portland,Realtime by Joe Hughes
Monday, July 30th, 2007
Art in Transit
I’ve been meaning to interview my friend Anukul (the voice of buskarma these days) about his involvement in Pittsburgh’s Art in Transit program, but it seems that WQED has saved me the trouble: Art in Transit is a program that turns Port Authority transit vehicles into mobile galleries by filling unused ad placard space inside [...]
Comments Off - Posted in Pittsburgh,Signage,Surroundings by Joe Hughes
Sunday, July 29th, 2007
Visualizing Walkability
When I first read Jane Jacobs’s seminal book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, this passage resonated with me: Being a structural system in its own right, a city can best be understood straightforwardly in its own terms, rather than in terms of some other kinds of organisms or objects. However, if the [...]