You might have already noticed a recent change with nb.translink.ca. If not, you can either go there directly or go to m.translink.ca, and click on “Next Bus”. Once you’ve chosen the bus stop #, you’ll notice the real-time map looks a little different. Now all bus stops have a “T” icon, so you can find them easily on the map. But this isn’t the big change. You can now not only see the schedule and the real-time locations of the buses that service the  stop # you searched for, you can click on any stop in Metro Vancouver and see the schedule and buses associated with it by simply moving around the map. Perhaps you see a bus stop that’s closer than the one you searched for. Now you can easily click on it and see if there is a route that you like and see where the buses that service that route are in real-time!

Think of it as a tweak of the Next Bus service that was released in September. Previously, you had to enter the bus stop # each time you wanted to find a bus near you. That meant having to return to the search page and possibly having to look up the bus stop # every time. Now you just need to enter a stop # once, and you can move around the real-time map and click on as many stops as you like.

Coming Next:

• The mobile team is working on being able to go directly to the real-time map without having to enter a bus stop # first. This way, you won’t need to find a bus # in order to use the map, which should save some time.
• As mentioned in my previous mobile post, future phases will include being able to search by route(s), search by user’s location and real-time bus arrival times.
• Once these phases have been rolled out, the mobile team will be working hard on making all of m.translink.ca accessible across numerous smart phone platforms including Android, Windows and Blackberry OS.

As always, your comments about the service are welcome. I’ve been forwarding each and every one of them to the mobile team and will continue to find answers to the questions and comments you post.