Saturday we tried to figure out what went wrong with Metro’s Tracker app that showed time and destination information for buses after Brian Ferris noticed it only showed neighborhood destinations instead of specific destinations.
Rochelle Ogershok from King County Metro sent me the answer via email:
Based on customer feedback, we modified the destination category last month to more clearly reflect geographic (neighborhood) areas, as opposed to specific destination information (such as 50th and Aurora). But after making the change, we began hearing from other customers who found the more general description equally confusing. So, beginning today, we’re going to list both – neighborhood and specific destination. We’ll be interested to hear from Tracker users about what they think.
So, what do you think?
It looks like they changed it again, this time for the better. It now shows both neighborhood and specific location.
This is much better than the last time I checked on the 44 and found that the destination read ‘North Seattle’ regardless if it was heading west to Ballard or east to the U-District.
I guess I’m responsible for all this commotion, so I figure I better weigh in.
The change does make it possible to tell which direction a bus is headed, so that’s good.
My favorite example, Route 65, is now listed as:
North Seattle – 30 Ave NE & NE 143 St
North Seattle – Brooklyn Ave NE And NE Campus Pkwy
While the fix is appreciated, I have to say I prefer the way it was setup before the Feb. 9 schedule revision. Specifically, the Route 65 would have been listed as:
North Seattle – Lake City
North Seattle – University District
This seems to match the naming scheme used on the buses themselves and also the stated goal “to more clearly reflect geographic (neighborhood) areas.” I feel like listing the specific street is going too far in direction of specificity. What’s wrong with the way it was?
Yeah I agree with brian. There is no excuse for not knowing where lake city is. However if you need to get out a map to find 30 Ave NE & NE 143st I could understand that. Precise information is not always the necessary information.
That is a good point, I don’t know the exact cross streets in, say, ballard or Greenwood, but I definitely know where those places are.
wouldn’t the most sensible solution be to indicate the direction of travel plus the neighborhood and cross street destination? e.g.:
(N) Lake City – 30 Ave NE & NE 143 St
(S) University District – Brooklyn Ave NE & NE Campus Pkwy
Usually, all I really care about knowing is whether the North|South|East|West-bound bus is on time on my route; secondarily, in a few cases (e.g. when the bus has two different terminals, like the Southbound 43 [cap hill/broadway vs downtown]) is any other information necessary.
I forget the ITS data feed schema (I used to siphon a bunch of it off for my own data mining experiments) so I don’t remember if direction is in there.
One of these days, I’m going to make up my own alternate mybus page that works a lot better on mobile phones and presents a bit more information (e.g. whether the bus is a long or a short one, which you can tell by the coach number)
Hey Andrew,
I think the N/S or E/W makes sense for a lot of routes, but then I wonder about routes like the 75, which basically makes a giant circle through North Seattle. It’s hard to pin a cardinal direction on it.
well it’s nice she gave you more info, but I’d like to know why I never received a response from them after I sent them a comment a week or two ago about this issue. Not all of us have special access to Metro/KC people. I get the feeling they simply delete many customer emails.
Also, the changes currently only show on Tracker and not on mybus. Do the mybus guys have to import the newer data?
Ideally, the system would allow us to specify whether we want specific or regional destination info. But I doubt that will ever happen.
Or at least roll back to the earlier version. As someone has already pointed out, the new change still won’t give clear enough info for some riders.
some more examples:
for the 48:
North Seattle – 15 Ave NE & NE 45 St
North Seattle – 32 Ave NW And Loyal Way NW
for the 75:
North Seattle – Leary Ave NW And NW Vernon Pl
North Seattle – Univ Way NE And NE Campus Pkwy
argh.
silly tracker destination names! The thing that irks me the most about the tracker names is that a lot of times they don’t match what the buses say on the readerboard.
This blog is interesting, but I don’t have an RSS feed for the main page – is this a blogger bug?
Anonymous, it’s right off to the right.
for clockwise/counterclockwise runs, C/CC would make sense (the ring-bahn in berlin is a good example of this where they have a symbol that indicates whether the run is heading clockwise or counterclockwise since the end-destinations are irrelevant)