Blog du Wren

North Sound City to City Public Transportation Guide

It's been a year now that I've been without a car. And while Scoot Scoot gets me around, it isn't the most efficient thing for longer distance travel*, so I very often find myself on the bus. In fact, I'm getting to know the local area bus schedule pretty damn well–so well, in fact, that I often find myself acting as consultant to people who want to go from A to B under C circumstance.

Fancy schmany public transportation districts have websites with trip planners where you can get routes to and from anywhere in the system without having special knowledge of which routes run when, where, etc. This is what I've set out to recreate for the transportation districts in our area. You select where you want to start and where you want to go and presto, this website lays out what routes to take, as well as helpful tidbits about schedule, price, etc.

One thing that the site doesn't offer (yet) is a full timetable for each schedule. One reason is because to maintain a separate database for all these would be problematic. Whenever a company changed its schedule, things would be out of sync until I realized the problem. Another reason is because I am just one guy, and the prospect of doing a full blown trip planner (for free) was a little overwhelming.

But despite the lacking time element, my hope is that this tool will help those who want to make inroads into public transportation travel but don't know where to start. Spread the word about North Sound City to City Public Transportation Guide.

Sunday March 9 2008

File under: transportation, coding

Toggle Comments (2)

comment?

on Sun 09th Mar, 2008 02:38 pm PDT lebn said:
This is an awesome idea and service wren. I am one of your readers who started following with the dreamscience trip and have kept checking back. I think this idea has huge potential, there is such a lack of regional public transportation info that spans from system to system. Ideas for expanding the site, pushing it further south, ie to portland, integrating other transportation means beyond the bus (train, shuttles, migrant worker busses, etc).I don't really know anything about building a site like this, but I'm sure there are folks out there who would get into geeking out on something like this and helping (amiel?). keep up the good worklebn
************************
on Fri 14th Mar, 2008 07:15 pm PDT Ryan said:
WREN, this is GREAT!!!
************************

<<The Speed of Technology

FC 22 - Three Piece Suit>>

Name:
URL: (optional)
Comment:
speak yer peace