PublicRoutes.com launches route finder

m.
Categories: , For mass transit or driving, it's like Google Transit, but clumsier.
Posted by unregistered user at 3/12/07 2:08 p.

m.
Well, I tried two routes. It got the first one right in terms of which route was the fastest, in a vacuum.

The trouble is that the bus in question runs every half hour, and that one is often going to be nearly half an hour slower when I actually need to leave, than another bus that isn't quite as fast in A-to-B terms. In practice, I seldom take the bus it recommended. And that was the only one it recommended, among more than one available.

A naive user wouldn't know there was more than one possibility, looking at this site.

On the second route, which I often take, it advised me to first take a cab for 1.4 miles to a more distant highway in order to board the bus.

This conflicts with reality so much that I'm surprised. I do have to walk a little was more to catch this bus than to catch the very closest bus, but the site's routing program is ridiculous in this particular case.

It also tried to tell me that my destination was in Snohomish, twice, before I found a way to fool it into doing the right thing.

And it concatenated my NNNN street address with the following N Ave part of my address to form "NNNNN Ave" for my starting point, until I likewise found a way to fool it into not doing that.

It has some advantages, like listing all the stops along the way. I really like that.

It's better than the printed schedule in that respect.

But at the moment, it's a good idea that needs more development and isn't ready for someone to depend on it blindly. To get the most out of this, you already have to know when and how it's pulling the wool over your eyes sometimes.

It might be right most of the time, but I can't and won't trust its Seattle area data at present.

This is lower quality work than has been done by several local sites here already. I wouldn't feel comfortable saying it's shoddy work as such, because it's based on good ideas, but I think they haven't taken enough time with it and it's in an alpha stage.

But it's something to watch for, when they get things worked out better.
Posted by unregistered user at 3/12/07 2:36 p.m.

It doesn't list anything like all the stops. It lists only a few of the major stops, widely separated. That's why it told you to catch a taxi to a major stop that it knew about, miles away, instead of walking to the one near your door.

I think the above statement is way too kind to the designers of this system. Maybe it works fine for driving, but that's the easy part. Credible transit information is the hard part, as anyone who uses transit around here knows.

This thing just flops into a puddle, badly. What a joke. People are going to be lost and waste hours trying to understand where they went wrong if they try to use this piece of crap.

I use the bus all the time, and have yet to need more than Metro's trip planner, a couple of paper bus routes, my wristwatch, and common sense. I think all these trip planners are solutions in search of a problem.
Posted by unregistered user at 3/12/07 8:11 p.

m.
Route 123 from Burien park and Ride to downtown Seattle:

1. No departure time given.

WTF!?

2.

Stated travel time is 36 minutes. The Metro timetable says 50 minutes. WTF!

?

3. There is no link anywhere to Metro for more info, in case you need it.

WTF!?

4.

Advertise your business in this space.

5. "The user assumes all risk of use.

"

This product is seriously defective. The maker of this thing needs to recall it from the marketplace immediately before a lot of people have a lot of unnecessary trouble because of it. People need real, true Metro information to get to doctors and hospitals among other things.

How can this company say that they can have no responsibility whatsoever for widespread use by the public of their defective product that will cause people some likely degree of harm?
Posted by unregistered user at 3/12/07 8:20 p.m.

Also, I looked this up (Burien Park and Ride to downtown Seattle) this evening at about 8:10 p.m.

The bus they told me to take, the 123, runs that route only during morning rush hour.

The 123 last ran today at 7:23 a.m. and will next run tomorrow at 5:23 a.

m.

Cow patties on a stick! What is going on here!

?
Hello,
This is Public Routes' support team. We very much appreciate your feedbacks and will address the issues quickly.

Please send your feedbacks with test addresses to support@publicroutes.com and we will do the needful.

Thanks again and continue visiting www.

publicroutes.com
Posted by unregistered user at 3/13/07 8:32 p.m.

feedbacks try feedback, we will do the the needful, no wonder our transit system is a mess your grammer say's it all
dude, your grammar isn't much better. less coffee in the morning, maybe? :-)
Posted by unregistered user at 3/14/07 11:21 a.

m.
"Do the needful" is a British-ism. Now where could that possibly come from.

Just a moment. I'm mentally drawing a map if India in my head. Where exactly is Bangalore, now?

Let' see if I have this right. Some smart, greedy Web 2.0-enabled businessman thinks up a great idea about a new way to cheaply scrape information from public Web sites like King County Metro's metrokc.

gov, package it in a much more ad-sales friendly format and sell it. He hires the cheapest available programmers, outsources support to the cheapest possible place, and spends the savings on marketing, publicity, and champagne.

Meanwhile, back at metrokc.

gov, they (and we) are being scraped by this in the poorest way possible.
Posted by unregistered user at 3/14/07 2:36 p.m.

To be more objective about this, I tried to replicate the data given above for the Burien P R to downtown routes. Here is what occurred.

First, I entered SW 150th St and 4th Ave SW, as the starting point.

I entered 4th Ave and Union St as the destination.

Pushing the bus button gave me the Route 123 as my only choice. The trip time was 36 minutes.

But a few minutes of that was walking from 1st to 4th. So I redid it with a destination of 1st Avenue and Union St, leaving everything else the same.

This time it gave me Route 122 as my only choice.

The trip time was 34 minutes. Or really it was 31 minutes, because 3 minutes were added on for two additional legs of the trip: one leg of 2 minutes to walk east from 1st Avenue and Union St to 1st Avenue and Union St, and another leg of 1 minute to walk from there to 1st Avenue and Union St.

It's true that Route 123 does not run after 7:21 a.

m. It generally takes 57 minutes according to Metro's online route finder. The very earliest trip at 5:23 takes slightly less time, no doubt because there's so little traffic at that time of the morning.

Then I kept exactly the same data but pushed the car trip button. The same trip now took 14 minutes. (Personally, I don't think I could drive from the Burien P R to downtown in 14 minutes at any time of day between morning and evening rush hours.

Does anyone who makes that trip know how realistic that is?)

The personalized route map for the 122 showed only a big yellow X with one street marked 1st Avenue and the other marked Union St. No other route info was shown.

No more testing is possible at the moment, because (at 2:29 p.m.) the site shows a Microsoft ASP .

NET error page stating 'Server Error in "/" Application' when I pushed the bus button. My guess is that this is an indication that the hardworking support person is at work.

[mail]newmedia@seattlepi.

com[/mail] -- Creates a link to an email address.