Friday Fun Poll – Has the new mobile site changed how you use transit?
Friday Fun Poll – Has the new mobile site changed how you use transit?
It’s been a crazy week, so I haven’t been able to post anything this week until now! Don’t worry, next week will be a busy one on the blog, so rest up this weekend, my friends, because there will be plenty of reading to stay on top of next week.
I thought it would be nice to have another Friday Fun Poll since the last one was in October when I asked the question, “What motivates how you spend most of you time on transit?”
This time around, I want to ask how the mobile site has or hasn’t changed your transit life. If you don’t know about m.translink.ca yet, I’ve written a few posts that will get you up to speed. For those of you who already know about the site, here’s the question:
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Has the new mobile site changed how you use transit?
Total Voters: 147 |
Since Google Maps got Translink information, I’ve never once looked at the Translink site.
Yes, I don’t leave the house/office until the bus I need to catch is at a certain point. :)
I still pack around all of the print schedules for every region in my backpack, as I find that is still the fastest way to find out what time a bus is leaving from a timing point, in an area I’m not familiar with. In areas I am in regularly, I usually use the Text Bus feature with the stop number. I then flip over to Next Bus on my iPhone and track the bus on GPS.
It’s quite a process with me…
I would love to make use of the mobile website but unfortunately I’m part of the crowd that has yet to own a smartphone; the site hasn’t worked for me since the switchover.
Thankful that alternatives exist out there like TransitDB. :)
Id: Ah yes, using the public transit function on the map is handy. However, google maps won’t show you where your bus actually is. Add the new predictive scheduling feature coming online very soon and nb.translink.ca looks pretty helpful. At least that’s my humble opinion. ;)
Michael: If the electrical grid goes down I need to use a non trolley bus, I now know who to ask. Now, how would I find you withing the Internet or phone… smoke signal perhaps?
I have used the mobile site, but find that the map is too crowded with all kinds of circles with arrows protruding from them. They overlap each other and hard to get actual information from the live bus screen. The schedule screen is okay, but the part that makes the site unique is seeing where the bus is, and that is a bit lacking in my mind. I most recently used it to track a #8 Fraser bus, and there are so many buses I couldn’t figure out which was going north, south, east, west. I think it’d be useful to have this as an app that used your current location on the map and pointed out the buses that are closest to you. Perhaps the next 2 or 3 only. I really don’t care about the buses downtown when I’m on Marine Drive and Fraser. It will be useful as well to choose which part of the route you want “8 Fraser” or “8 Downtown” for example. Then there will be less overlap of icons on my little screen. (Bare in mind, I’m 40 years old, not a teenager. So I didn’t grow up with looking at little screens and seeing so much on them. If I could filter out some of what I don’t need, this site will be much more useful to me.)
alas, i do use it, but the format isnt up to blackberry standards. the NB feature closes my browser due to its size, and i cannot scroll up and down the map…….
This site does not work for me. At first I thought my iPhone 3Gs was too old to support it but then I asked my friend who also had an iPhone 3Gs to see if it works and it in fact worked.
Perhaps the mobile site does not want to work for me?
I wish that the Translink iPhone app was still around. It was more reliable then the new mobile site and at least it always worked for me every time I used it. I rather use the standard translink.ca site than the mobile site even if on my smartphone.
Other then that I rather just send a text message to find out when the next bus is coming.
Why was the iPhone app deactivated?
Works great on Blackberry’s 9800 Torchie Webkit browser. There’s some limitations, but I tested on the newer 9810 and it works even better.
My data consumption is a little higher pushing my 500mb monthly plan from the maps, but with 3x Blackberry compression, I’m still not paying any surcharges.
This GPS tracking should have been available many years ago earlier. The 2 minute delay is a little pain. How about dropping it to 30 seconds?
it works all right on android 2.2.2
but i only use it when i don’t have access to a computer, since i’m not on a data plan
Never had a problem on my Android 2.2, except the default zoom level. Every time, the first thing I have to do is tap – twice to zoom out to get to a point where I can see where the next bus is. Every time. IMO, the default view is “too zoomed”.
I think this discussion is more helpful if we indicated which phone model we are running Android and Blackberry on. The operating system is insufficient for clarity.
For the record, I’m using windows phone 7.5
Id: Translink trip planner also allows you to choose how you would like to search (ie. walking distance, accessibility, etc)
Umm used to find if a bus is running late or early, but for trip planning, it seriously lacks. I use Google maps.
The new site hasn’t really change my travel habits. For one thing I don’t have a smartphone, and secondly the mobile site doesn’t function well for laptop users. I tried to use it once on my laptop, but it gave me inaccurate results on where my bus was located.