Tag: transit

Improved NYC Subway Map

Mr. Jabbour pinned 2 maps to the wall, then pointed to the different renderings of the Atlantic Avenue terminal in Brooklyn, which he says is the most difficult station to represent because so many subway lines converge there. In Mr. Jabbour’s map, the subway lines run parallel to one another, making the map easier to read, if slightly inaccurate. Each line is marked with a circle bearing the route’s letter or number, instead of the oblong station markers used on the current map.

Sometimes truth is less important than knowledge.

GypsyMaps

transit routing, yay

London Transit

Oyster is startlingly de-humanising for the people who work inside the systems. Bus drivers in particular are now hidden behind plastic screens. Instead of looking at the passengers, they are looking at the internal CCTV to make sure no-one is getting in the back door. I can’t remember the last time a bus driver met my eyes. There’s no more conversation to have – ‘top me up’ doesn’t lead anywhere, in the way a destination does.

jo on public transport in london

Listening works

bloggers helping to improve the toronto transit website (and they are listening). this is awesome and should happen in boston and zurich too (and all other places with horrible transit sites, ie just about all of them)

Google Transit 5 New Cities and API

worldchanging is a useful broker to make tools like this happen. maybe they could coordinate lobbying for additional data releases?

Google Transit Feed Specification

bunch of CSV for public transit companies to spec their routes, etc. lobby your local transit company now.
2007-01-29:

an effort to offer tools to transportation providers which generate transit system data in the Google Transit data feed format from other existing transit data formats.

awesome! this ought to get much more play

ui failure

yesterday, we came back from DC, and when we wanted to get on the T at airport station, there was a huge queue. apparently, MBTA had decided to replace the one, 2 second process of “hand over $1.25, get token, insert token, pass barrier” with a 2 minute ordering process with their new ticket machines. the new machines had such a lousy UI that each machine had an MBTA employee assisting with the ordering. instead of a big button to get your damn ticket, you have to wade through a forest of choices (hablas espanol? single ticket, monthly pass, lifelong membership? pay with card, check, sale of daughter? receipt? fries with that? sign up for T frequent commuter miles?) with that familiar touch screen experience (ie, 50% of the time the screen doesn’t recognize your choice). given that just about everyone just wants to get a single ticket and has $1.25 ready, not making that a default accessible with one push is mindless. at least you can recharge your charlie card..