TransLink.ca gets a new and improved site search

The new, prettier search results page!

If you’re searching the TransLink website, you may have notice some improvements to the site search!

As of Monday, your search results are now displayed in a nicer-looking format, with new features that hopefully enhance your search experience. One big change is that you can narrow your search down to just web pages, or documents, or social discussions (the blog, Twitter, or the forums)!

Try the site search out for yourself: enter some terms in the Search box at the top right of any TransLink page. And find out more details on the new search features below!

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Check it: you can embed the TransLink trip planner on your website!

Look: we’ve just launched a new widget to let you embed our trip planner on your website! That’s the trip planner widget from our homepage right above this paragraph!

You can grab the code here if you’re interested. It could be really handy if you have a site for your store or business, or an upcoming wedding or conference or other events, and want you to give your guests a way to plan trips easily. Or if you just want the trip planner on your site somewhere, go ahead!

The regular-sized widget is shown above, but there’s also a narrow version. Here it is below.

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Friday fun post: how would you improve the design of the Buzzer blog?

If you like, skip to the end of this post to share how you think the Buzzer blog design can be improved!

Results from last week: if you’re standing and a seat opens up near you, do you jump for it?

Well my friends, we’re back with poll results!

Last week, I asked this question: if you’re standing on transit and a seat opens up nearby, do you jump for it?

219 of you bravely took the poll, and with 68% of the vote, the most popular answer was ” I look around first to see if someone else needs it, then I take it if no one else wants it.” (In the comments, Jeff McLeod commented on this result with “I see the second option is in the lead. Glad to see we are following our Canadian customs of thinking of others first lol.”)

The other two answers were rather far behind, but close in proportion to each other: 17% say they grab the seat asap, while 14% say they always like to stand.

As usual, the comments had some fascinating discussion. I’m not sure whether I could pull out any general conclusions. Mostly everyone said they keep an eye out for who deserves a seat more. It really could depend on the situation at hand. For example, here’s Hilary:

It depends entirely on what I feel like doing. I don’t often find myself on a bus/train so crowded as to have no seats open when I get on, but if I’ve already found a comfortable spot to lean against then I probably won’t bother to sit down when a seat appears. I mean, there’s not much point to it.

I do prefer to sit when I have the option, though, and if there’s seats to be had then I’ll probably sit down when I get on just out of pure and simple laziness.

Philippe G said something quite similar too.

I donno what it is, but if I start the ride standing up, I’m committed for the rest of the trip.

But like some others, samatwitch said that physical difficulties were key, so a seat was a priority.

Having a bad back, and usually needing to get off the front so that I can ask for the step to be lowered, I now grab the first empty seat – and am often offered it. So I’m either starting to look older – or in pain! ;)

I used to always get up and give up my seat for someone who looked as if they needed it more, but now I wait for someone else to do that, unless it’s an obvious case.

This week: how would you improve the design of the Buzzer blog?

Well, as you may have guessed, we are going to do a little update to the Buzzer blog’s design over the next month or so, and I would LOVE your feedback on how you think it could improve!

We can’t go radically different—the chief aim is to bring the Buzzer blog design in line with the current look of the TransLink website—but we do have an opportunity to do some tweaking and upgrades within that scope.

So please let me know what you think! Here’s a list of questions to help spark some thoughts.

• What do you look for when you visit the blog? How does the design help or hinder your visit?
• How do you find what you need on the blog? Do you have trouble finding things you’re looking for?
• Is there anything you want to see more of?
• Do you use the links on the sidebar?
• How are the RSS feeds working out for you? Could we be delivering blog posts to you in other ways?
• Just in general: what do you like and dislike about the design of the Buzzer blog?
• Anything else to add?

A bit of a caution: we can’t obviously incorporate everything you suggest, so I hope you can understand if it doesn’t show up in the final design. Also, super drastic changes are lovely to hear (I’d love to know where you think this could go!), but just be aware that they probably won’t be implemented if they don’t fit the scope and/or take a LOT of development to get going!

RSS feed for real-time road and transit alerts

OK, here’s another tip for getting real-time road and transit alerts while you’re out on the system!

We now have an RSS feed which sends out the latest updates on road and traffic conditions. (Here’s an explanation of RSS.)

You don’t even need a special reader or app or anything — just click on the RSS feed link in your smartphone’s mobile browser, and then refresh the page to get the latest updates.

The RSS feed is linked to our traffic and transit alerts map, by the way. Every time the map gets updated with new info, the RSS feed is automatically updated too.

Again, you can also follow our TransLink Twitter account for real-time transit info when you’re out and about. Or try our other web and mobile resources for real-time info.

Plan your transit trips on your smartphone

The mobile trip planner displayed on an iPhone. Click for a larger view!

Did you know there’s a mobile version of our transit trip planner?

If you visit tripplanning.translink.ca on your smartphone’s web browser, you can access our transit trip planner while on the go.

It can be really handy if you’re out and about, and you don’t know the system well. We added this feature back in December, but I’m not sure that many people know about it!

Just put in the start and end points of your journey, plus the time you want to travel, and it will tell you what buses and trains to take. You can also customize your search, like asking only for wheelchair accessible routes, or no SkyTrain, or others.

Anyway, that’s just one more tool you can use to navigate our transit system. Google Maps for mobile is another transit trip planner you can try—it has fewer options than our trip planner, but is still really good!

Next Bus SMS tip: how to get the times for just one specific bus route

Well, just in time for Valentine’s Day, here is a tip for finding times for your one and only bus route :)

Likely you’ve heard of our Next Bus SMS service already — you text your bus stop number to 33333, and we’ll send you a text message telling you the next six buses arriving at your stop.

But if you’re at a stop where many bus routes pick up, and you’re only waiting for one of them—well, all you need to do is add the route number after the bus stop number.

So, say you’re looking for the next arrivals of the #4 route at the busy Howe and Robson stop downtown (that’s stop #54831). Just text “54831 4″ to 33333!

And if this still makes very little sense to you, check out the video above for a nice explanation of this tip, plus the rest of the Next Bus SMS system :)

iPhone app roundup for Vancouver transit

I’m not sure everyone is aware of all the iPhone apps that can be used to navigate or find out more about Vancouver transit. So I thought I’d put a quick list together, in case they might be handy during the Games period. Here we go!

(Non-iPhone users: we do have many other non-iPhone-centric web and mobile resources where you can get real-time transit info!)

By the way, if you have used any of these, please feel free to share your favourites!

TransLink and Foursquare team up to offer a transit badge!

I’m so excited to announce that we are working with Foursquare, the mobile social-networking site, to put out a special “transit champion” badge for Metro Vancouver!

It’s going to be great fun if you’re using Foursquare and riding transit during this busy Olympic period – make sure you check in and earn your badge on the go!

If you’ve never heard of Foursquare before, it’s a really neat social networking site that makes a game out of exploring your neighbourhood, and it’s got about 350,000 registered users worldwide right now.

You sign in on your mobile device, share your location with friends, and share handy tips or reasons to explore other things nearby. But you also earn points for checking in to locations around the region, and the person checking into a location the most becomes “Mayor” of that location, at least until someone else checks in more!

Our TransLink transit champion badge on Foursquare!

Plus, you can unlock a “badge” for checking into certain types of places – several visits to the gym gets you a “Gym Rat” badge, for example.

In our case, 10 checkins to a TransLink train station (SkyTrain and West Coast Express!) or a major bus exchange gets you the Transit Champion badge! (Tip: you have to be friends with TransLink on Foursquare to see the badge on your mobile device.)

Anyway, Foursquare has been superamazing in helping us put this together, and it’s really great to have a badge for you all to enjoy. We’re so excited to keep on exploring ways to connect with our users through Foursquare! Thanks again to Tristan Walker at Foursquare and the awesome web team at SFBART for helping us connect!

And you can feel free to e-mail in your tips and recommendations to be added to locations through the TransLink page on Foursquare! Or add them yourself too, Foursquare users :)

Route411: another iPhone transit app

Another iPhone transit app for Vancouver users has entered the fray this January.

Route411 is an app developed by fusedlogic inc. of Edmonton, and it provides stop and route info for Edmonton, Vancouver, and Toronto.

(Other apps for Vancouver transit include the TransLink app, iBusVan and the Buzzer blog app — if you’re curious!)

And here’s a little interview with Evan Adnams of fusedlogic to tell us a bit about Route411.

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A Buzzer blog iPhone app!

The Buzzer blog iPhone app!

Wow – you can now download a Buzzer blog app for your iPhone, created by local developer Mark Larocque! Search for “TransLink Buzzer” in the Apple App Store, or just use this link here.

Mark’s free app pulls the Buzzer blog feed and the TransLink Twitter feed into one very pretty interface. I’m thinking it could be really handy for transit updates during the Games, if you’re looking for a one-stop iPhone-based app.

(Other apps for Vancouver transit include the TransLink app, iBusVan and Route411 — if you’re curious!)

Anyway, it was a lovely surprise to find out Mark had put this app together. I certainly hadn’t been prodding people to get the Buzzer into the App Store, and it’s nice to see the blog is valued enough to warrant its own app.

Mark also kindly agreed to do an interview, so we could learn more about the app and how he put it together.

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Olympic travel tips: web and mobile resources for transit info during the Games

This particular set of tips is useful for both visitors and current residents! Please pass it along to others who might find this useful!

So far in the Olympic tips series: info on tickets, bike info, Park and Rides, a guide to transit staff, where to find real-time transit info online, and transit etiquette. Let me know if I should add anymore!

This lady is checking for transit alerts at TransLink's Twitter account, or maybe at travelsmart2010.ca. There's so many options!

If you want the latest about transit and traffic during the Games, we’ve got several web and mobile resources where you can look. Almost all will have real-time updates!

Here’s the overview:

• see the transit alerts page (real-time updates, 5:30 a.m. to 1:30 a.m.)
• check the TransLink Twitter account (real-time updates, 5 a.m. to 1 a.m.)
• sign up for alerts via text or e-mail
• look at an interactive Google Map on the TransLink homepage, with the latest transportation issues in the region updated in real-time (it’s called the Games Transportation Alerts System)
• use our RSS feed of road and transit alerts
• try our mobile TransLink site, and travelsmart2010.ca (real-time updates will go here too)
• use the trip planner (it will give you transit alerts for your journey)
• the Buzzer blog (for larger updates mostly)

And here’s a little more about all of them!

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Get your transit alerts by text or e-mail!

Sign up for transit alerts through e-mail or text messaging! Here’s where the signup link is located on our front page (or just click this picture!)

Hurrah – at long last, you can now get customized transit alerts through text-message or e-mail!

We’ve just launched the service, and you can sign up to get your updates through the TransLink homepage (or click here).

You’ll only get alerts about transit services that you’re interested in. When you sign up, you’re asked to register your regular transit trips, which tells the service what specific routes or services you want alerts about. (You can sign up for system-wide alerts too.)

And nicely enough, you can also select which days you want to receive alerts, so you won’t be bothered on the weekend about changes that only matter for you during weekdays.

Quirks and quarks

This is all new to us, so here’s a list of a few quirks we’re currently seeing, plus a few tips based on what’s happening behind the scenes. (And feel free to share any more you discover too!)

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iBusVan: an iPhone transit app

The iBusVan logo.

Have you seen iBusVan, an iPhone app for Vancouver transit? It’s now using TransLink’s GTFS data feed to power its schedules!

The app is available for $0.99 and it’s the work of Zhenwang Yao, an independent app developer from SFU.

I e-mailed Zhen and did an interview so we could all learn about him and his transit tool — check it out below.

(Also, if you don’t know, TransLink offers its own official iPhone app for free in the App Store. But we do welcome development of tools like iBusVan to provide more info options and features for customers!)

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Yay: our trip planner gets some big improvements!

The old trip planner (pictured here) will be getting some major improvements!

Note: I’m still on holiday, returning Monday Jan 4!

If all is going according to plan, you should keep an eye out for some great improvements to our transit trip planner today (or shortly thereafter!)

Here’s the list of improvements I’ve been told about:

• The big one: there is now a widget which searches for addresses as you type them into the from/to fields, so you can select your match right away. It also recognizes common contractions such as E or Hwy, etc. This functionality also carries over to Next Bus and Schedule lookup.
• Early in your trip plan, you can now select some trip options, such as minimize walking or no Skytrain or others.
• We’ve added an Olympic Preferred Route option for planning trips.
• For the first time, we will have a mobile Trip Planner that can be used by web enabled cell-phones!
• Alerts and information we know about your planned trip will be shown right in your results, so you can get up-to-the-minute information about what might affect your travel plans.
• The schedule lookup has been revamped so that it all fits on one page and is easily printable.

I’m still away, but feel free to explore and discuss – I’ll get answers for you once I’m back!

Adopt-a-Stop: a proposed user-created web app

Brainstorming for the Adopt-a-Stop web app.

A few people have already caught onto this, but if you haven’t heard yet, we’ve released our transit data online in GTFS format. So now, developers out there can use it to create useful apps for everyone! (A more formal press release will be sent out to promote the data in the near future.)

Anyway, to take advantage of this new data, Karen Fung and Richard Eriksson are proposing to put together a web app called Adopt-A-Stop, and they’d love your feedback and/or support.

Here’s an excerpt from their blog post about the project:

The basic gist? Here in Vancouver, every bus stop in the system has a 5 digit ID, and now we also have geographic information for each stop thanks to TransLink’s recent release of their data in the GTFS. The long and the short of it is:

We want people to be able to find and create stories with their cellphones that are associated with bus stops.

So feel free to check out their original post about the project and let them know what you think. (They’ve also pitched the idea to the Knight News Challenge, a competition rewarding community news and social media experiments — good luck!)