Trimess

Sunday, October 16, 2011

I wonder just how much money does go into developing this fluff?

TriMet: News Release - TriMet launches first-of-its-kind multimodal trip planner

4 comments:

Max said...

Even if it was funded by TriMet (which it wasn't), it would still be worth the $$.

Al M said...

I don't think I have even one rider on any buses I have driven, E-V-E-R, and I am not kidding, that has ever used any of these applications Max!

As matter of fact, had it not been for you, I would still be using the transit tracker!

Most people I move, use the schedules.

That's right Max they don't even use the transit tracker!

It's fluff and stuff from where I sit.

So who is funding this then, if its not Trimet?

Max said...

Of course you don't see people using the trip planner -- it's generally used at home from a desktop PC.

"TriMet's web site averages over 950,000 visits per month and about 550,000 of those visits are to plan transit trips. "

Or if you don't believe that -- go look at Google's stats. "trimet trip planner" is the second most common search for people in the Portlad metro area!

To answer your question, this was funded by $150K 2-year grant from Metro; and it was also co-developed by people around the world.

Also:
I think Transit Tracker and the other third party apps are used a lot more than you think. PDXbus, for example, is reported to generate more than 100,000 hits a day.

I think the question to ask the riders is: "Do you ever check to find out when the bus is coming? How do you do that?"...then see what they say. Maybe I'll conduct a little survey.

Max said...

BTW:
Even if nobody used 3rd party apps, who cares? TriMet's investment is peanuts -- they already have the hardware on the buses and produce the data for their own dispatch system, Transit Tracker by phone/web/text, etc. Creating the data is expensive, but providing access to what you're already doing costs TriMet basically nothing.

Also I should reiterate, of course, that what has been announced isn't a third party app at all -- it's a new trip planner (i.e. to replace the one that TriMet is currently paying $51K/year to license).