Next Bus Signs Live on Swift!

Community Transit’s first real-time bus information feature was officially turned on this week when the next bus signs at Swift stations went live.

These signs count down to the arrival of the next Swift bus, e.g., 12 minutes, 6 minutes, etc. When the bus is 1 minute away from the station, there is an audible chime and the signs say “Due.” After the bus departs, the signs start counting down to the arrival of the next Swift bus.

Because this is new technology, there will be a period of adjustment. The signs may not display correctly all the time. We already know that the audio chime at 1 minute may have some volume issues. That is something we are working to correct. Also, the timing of the chime has not always been exact in testing. We will continue to monitor that as well.

If you notice an error such as the bus not arriving at the displayed time, or the chime not working, you can help us improve the system by calling (425) 353-RIDE (7433) or sending a note to riders@commtrans.org.

Within a few weeks, next bus signs will be operational at the three largest transit centers: Ash Way, Lynnwood and Mountlake Terrace. This fall we will be launching a real-time bus departures feature that riders can access by phone, desktop computer and mobile devices.

Electric Vehicles Can Charge Up at Mountlake Terrace Transit Center

Last Saturday, May 5, Community Transit and the City of Mountlake Terrace held an event at the Mountlake Terrace Transit Center to unveil 10 new electric vehicle charging stations. The charging stations were installed by the city thanks to a federal stimulus grant to help complete a goal of creating a network of charging stations along the I-5 corridor. U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen was there to help commemorate the event.

The 10 stations can charge up to 20 electric vehicles at a time. The city charges a fee for the electricity, now 85 cents an hour. At the event, several electric cars were there to get charged up, including a red Tesla roadster electric sports car.

The event was also used to announce that the transit center has received a Green Globes “One Globes” certification by the Green Building Initiative (GBI). This is similar to LEED certification for buildings. It means the Mountlake Terrace Transit Center was built with sustainable principles that create a low impact on the environment, reduce energy consumption and reduce overall maintenance costs.

The transit center was built with concrete using recycled materials, includes a daylighted stream as part of its stormwater runoff filtration system, has 30 solar panels that feed into the regional power grid and uses low-energy lighting in the parking garage.

The transit center earned a One Globes certification out of a possible four globes. The Mountlake Terrace Transit Center is believed to be one of the first non-occupied buildings in the world to be recognized for sustainable construction.

UW Husky Cards Get Smart

The region hit another ORCA milestone this week – converting University of Washington U-PASS users to ORCA. Actually, we’re starting small by first enabling ORCA for the staff and faculty U-PASS this summer.

Both students and staff have received new Husky Cards with smart card technology inside and an ORCA logo outside. But we’re not loading the cards with passes all at once.

There are about 60,000 potential U-PASS users on campus each day (staff, faculty and students), the single biggest ORCA account in the region. Last quarter, 64 percent of UW Seattle students purchased a U-PASS. Community Transit has a number of bus routes dedicated to serving campus, for good reason. Last month we had 60,000 boardings on our University routes.

Edmonds Community College began offering an ORCA-powered EdPass this spring. We don't have complete data since the quarter just ended, but it appears the simple, new way of purchasing and using a bus pass has been a success. More than 2,500 students purchased their first ORCA-powered EdPass this spring - and will save $10 if they load it with a bus pass again next quarter. The new EdPass bumped Community Transit’s percentage of boardings using ORCA cards to almost 65 percent last month, well above the first quarter regional average of 51 percent ORCA boardings.

A final bit of good news for ORCA aficionados – in case you hadn’t noticed, the ORCA website got some significant usability improvements earlier this month. Upgrades will continue to be made quarterly. And, of course, there are now many more places to reload your ORCA card throughout the region.

The Future of Swift

By June DeVoll
Community Transit Swift Project Manager

One of the benefits of bus rapid transit is the ability to incrementally add to the service to improve it. While Swift is already performing extremely well, there are additional upgrades underway to help ensure speed and reliability.

Additional Everett Stations
In the original partnership agreement between Community Transit and Everett Transit, Everett Transit agreed to fund the construction of all stations within city limits. In 2008, four of the originally identified stations were deferred to a later date to manage the overall project cost for Everett Transit. Everett Transit was subsequently successful in obtaining a State Regional Mobility Grant to build the remaining stations.

The four stations are now underway at Madison (northbound) Pecks (southbound) and 112th Street. Two of the stations are substantially complete, but still need all electronic equipment activated and commissioned. Current projections will have all four stations opened within the first quarter of 2011.

Traffic Signal Priority
Currently, traffic signal priority (TSP) exists on the southern 10.5 miles of the 16.7 mile route. The City of Everett is continuing with their project to install TSP at all intersections within the city limits, but progress has been slow. The city controllers are over 30 years old and are incapable of prioritizing the signal. When activated in the current configuration, the Swift emitters allow signal pre-emption and hold the lights green for Swift coaches (more like the immediate priority given to emergency vehicles than the slightly extended green lights intended for transit).

The city has had many changes on this project, but the current timeline includes possible installation of new equipment by summer 2011. The additional TSP will give Swift coaches priority through the entire corridor and help reduce travel time even more.

Queue Jump at 148th Street
The Swift corridor includes 6.5 miles of "Business Access and Transit" lanes in the southern portion of the route on Highway 99, which give the coaches a priority in the curb lane. However, where the lane ends at 148th Avenue, the coaches must proceed north through the intersection and then merge into the general purpose traffic. Often, coaches get trapped waiting for a safe gap. A “queue jump” signal would give Swift a green light before the general purpose lanes, allowing buses to merge safely. A federal grant was obtained this summer and discussions are underway with the Washington State Department of Transportation, which has jurisdiction on the traffic signal. It is estimated the queue jump could be in place by summer 2011.

Advanced Technology
When Community Transit's Advanced Public Transportation Systems (APTS) project comes to fruition, it will have many beneficial impacts on Swift.

With the Automatic Vehicle Locators (AVL), dispatchers will have a real time display of coaches to help manage the “headway performance,” keeping buses consistently 10 minutes apart on weekdays.

With the Automatic Passenger Counters (APC), accurate and reliable passenger counts will be available at all times. APC’s will give robust passenger data about where and when customers board Swift, usage by trip and by time of day, and deboarding locations also.

The Automatic Annunciation System will perhaps be one of the first items that passengers notice. The coaches will automatically announce all stops as they approach the station. Coach operators do this manually now, but the sound quality is not as good as we’d like because buses were design for the automated system.

The Real Time Passenger Information signs will be installed at each station and will show customers precisely when the next coach will arrive – thus reducing stress and worry about catching a bus.

Bus Plus Survey: Seattle and Real-Time Schedules

At the beginning of November, Community Transit received more than 1,000 responses to our survey about bus route information. This information will be used to help improve our rider materials and the way we communicate with our customers. Many people added additional questions or comments. I responded to some in an earlier post.

Bus stop posters in Seattle: One person asked why we took the schedule information off the bus stop at Terrace & 5th. King County Metro Transit prints and posts our information at stops in King County, and we weren’t aware that several of the Community Transit route schedules no longer appear at that stop. So, thanks for mentioning that (we’re working with Metro to get it fixed). If you ever notice a missing schedule poster or other problem at a bus stop, please notify our Customer Information staff and provide the location and stop ID number (on the pole and schedule).

Another person asked why some of the Seattle stop posters list times from stops several blocks earlier in the trip. Again, we send Metro our schedule information and they post it. Community Transit has a practice of posting the estimated arrival times at stops in between our designated timepoints. But Metro’s practice is to list only the official timepoints on stop posters - the same select stops listed in Bus Plus books and on bus driver schedule instructions. So that’s what you get in downtown Seattle.

You can use the “Find Next Bus” feature of our Trip Planner to find the next four estimated arrival times for any stop in King, Pierce or Snohomish counties. Just be aware that the times are estimates, and buses may arrive early.

Or late. Real-time bus information was the most requested feature in all the survey comments. As someone who experienced an afternoon commute home from Seattle last week (one of the days when we used our electronic alerts to warn “I-5 Accident Causing Delays”), I personally understand the demand for knowing when your bus is actually going to show up. The short answer is “We’re working on it.”

Planning and IT staff just returned from a week-long test of our real-time technology, and many issues remain to be resolved in the coming year.

When we’re done, we will feed real-time data to the public via the Web, mobile devices and by telephone (when you call in a stop number). We will have real-time signs at Ash Way Park & Ride, Lynnwood Transit Center, Mountlake Terrace Transit Center and at every Swift Station. Another part of the project is electronic signs on board every bus that will list the next stop as the bus approaches, and audio call-outs of stop names and important landmarks.

In the meantime, the information we have to convey to customers can be limited. Riders often know a bus is late before we do, and our Customer Information and Communications staff often won’t know precisely why or when it will arrive. We are committed to communicating with riders when there are system-wide delays or major reroutes. We also put in special effort when winter weather impacts our service – and I don’t mean rain!

New Swift Stations Coming Soon

Riders of the Swift bus rapid transit line, as well as drivers on Highway 99 in Snohomish County, are aware that four new Swift stations are under construction.

The four stations in Everett were in the original route plan but were not built because of cost considerations. Now, the City of Everett has received a state regional mobility grant to fund the four stations.

The stations are located on Evergreen Way southbound at Pecks Drive, Evergreen Way northbound at Madison Street, and Highway 99 at 112th Street southbound and northbound.

Ground work on these stations began in late September and the structure of the Madison Street station is going up this week. Steel on the two 112th Street stations will likely go up in the next couple weeks, with the Pecks Drive station coming last.

Crews worked with nearby businesses on the construction schedule. At Pecks, the Value Village asked that the sidewalk not be torn up until after Halloween as that is the busy time for that store. Similarly, the Albertson’s at Madison asked that work be done by Thanksgiving time as they sell Christmas trees in that southwest corner of their parking lot.

Once the structural work on the stations is complete, there is still electrical and communications work to be done. Swift stations each have two cash- and credit card-taking ticket vending machines and two ORCA card readers for quick, off-board fare payment.

The plan is to open the two northbound stations as they’re completed, likely before the end of the year. The southbound stations will be opened later, likely by mid-February. This directional pairing is being done to complete and commission the technological components. The new stations will give riders more stop options and provide more access to the fast and frequent rides on Swift.

All of this news comes at a great time because the one year anniversary of Swift is Nov. 30.

It’s hard to believe that this BRT line has been in existence just one year. By February of this year, Swift became Community Transit’s highest ridership route. The agency’s projection for its first year was a 25 percent increase in ridership from Day One. From 1,500 riders on Nov. 30, 2009, Swift has seen a better than 100 percent jump in ridership as October 2010 saw an average of about 3,500 riders each weekday!

The week of Nov. 29, this blog will feature daily stories about the state’s first bus rapid transit line, commemorating Swift’s first anniversary. Look for new statistics, a look back at the award-winning Swift launch celebration, and previews of what’s to come for BRT in Snohomish County.

We invite your thoughts on Swift as well…

OneBus Away Posts Community Transit Data

Kudos to the folks at OneBusAway for doing both the leg-work and head-work to procure and convert Community Transit schedule data for use in their online transit applications. While the same schedule data is available on our own website, OneBusAway has many mobile-friendly apps.

Their web-based schedule-finder makes it easy to find stops and their schedules using a Google map. Zoom in close to see all the stops in an area and select for schedule info. Here's what a co-worker had to say bout the Android app: " I have just been scrolling around the beautiful map, touching different stops and looking at available routes, 'starring' my favorite stops and routes, etc. looks great! i am even more psyched we are on there now, and i see why everyone loves it."

I did have some trouble accessing stop-based schedules using my phone or text message. Each transit agency has its own set of stop ID numbers. OneBusAway has a zip code feature to help sort out which area you are traveling in and thus which agency’s stop information you want. Apparently, I had improperly or never set my "default location," and the system thought I was in California. When I reset my location and entered a Community Transit stop # (find yours by route on Community Transit's website or posted on the bus stop itself), I heard just how many minutes until each bus route was scheduled to arrive at that stop.

Snohomish County residents and travelers also can access Sound Transit and King County Metro Transit data at OneBusAway. In the case of data from King County, it is "real-time" based on GPS input from the buses as they travel their routes. Community Transit doesn't yet have that technology, so our data on OneBusAway is identical to what you see printed online and on paper, based on schedules, not actual arrivals.

While I'm talking about cool things other people have done to make transit information more accessible, see this map of all ORCA card retail and customer service locations. It's as up-to-date as the regional ORCA website (which is to say a little behind). For a current list of outlets in Snohomish County - without maps - see our web page.

Open Government 2.0

Warning: This blog post is about technology. That means: it is way over my head, and maybe yours, too. But really, we’re 10 years into the 21st Century. Guess we gotta go techie sometimes.

I spent two days last week in Seattle at a conference called “Open Government 2.0.” The concept is that governments at all levels have all sorts of data and information that the public could use to participate in, influence and understand government. Beyond that, idealists in the room hope that technology might help create a whole new way of governing in the 21st Century.

The West Coast has many leaders in this effort. For city government trying to make data available, see Seattle's data port. Portland just launched an “apps contest” so local developers can help put city data to use. Check out their new iPhone app, which helped increase reports of graffiti from 10 to 228.. British Columbia officials are still excited about the success of their Facebook “You Gotta Be Here” campaign for the Olympics.

Like many conferences, the real value was in meeting and speaking with the people in attendance. Mukilteo City Councilwoman Jennifer Greggerson was there, and took Community Transit service to the event. See her Tweets about the conference (with link to her blog), here.

As is often the case, the lawyer in the room was a bit of a wet blanket – no offense to the very informative Ramsey Ramerman, Everett’s assistant city attorney. He pointed out that social media can create important public records and even public meeting issues that must be considered by governments and elected officials.

For those of you who know enough to be fans of One Bus Away – which provides access to King County Metro (and now Pierce Transit) bus information, you’ll be jealous to hear that I met the mastermind himself, Brian Ferris. Even though Community Transit doesn’t have real-time bus information (yet), he’d like us in the fold.

But everything is complicated when your data is not standardized. That was a big message of the conference, and one that drives home the value of Google Transit – not the application itself, but the fact that it uses standardized schedule data (General Transit Feed Specification) which can be reused in so many ways, by so many people. Michael Keating of the Open Planning Project is working to use GFTS data and open source programming to create an “open trip planner” for transit. Not surprisingly, one of his partners in that effort is the trailblazing Bibiana McHugh and Portland TriMet (which worked with Google to develop the GTFS).

I also talked to Linda Thielke of King County Metro. She seemed a little disappointed not to have any snow events this winter after Metro developed all sorts of new communication plans to improve on last year’s efforts. They have an “Eye on Your Metro Commute” blog to post peak-hour rider information. They also added an email/text alerts system similar to what we have had at Community Transit for almost three years.

My take-away from the conference is this: Technology is a powerful tool, but not an end in itself. Both are important to remember.

High-Tech Dreams Meet Budget Reality

The creation of this blog was included in the Social and Electronic Communication Plan developed by Community Transit staff last year. So was a mobile-friendly website and the sharing of our schedule information with Google for use in the private company’s Google Transit tool (we’d also make that schedule data available to the public and other programmers).

Unfortunately, it takes both staff and financial resources to turn high-tech dreams into reality, and both are in limited supply right now. Due to budget cuts and a hiring freeze, our IT department has 18 percent fewer staff positions now than a year ago. That played heavily into the elements and timeline approved in our final electronic communication plan: low-tech blog now, mobile web and Google Transit later.

But all is not lost. Many agencies that use Google Transit don’t have their own trip planners. We do. The Trip Planner on our website is a valuable tool that has many of the same features as Google Transit - and some additional ones that we customize. Our regional Trip Planner incorporates King County Metro, Community Transit, Sound Transit, Everett Transit, state ferry and Pierce Transit information all in one place (only two of those partners are now on Google).

By having our own Trip Planner, we are able to highlight related rider alerts, include fare information and link to route schedules. We update landmark names, include holiday schedules and provide a one-stop-shop of transit info. We plan to make several small but significant improvements to the Trip Planner functionality this year, and your suggestions are welcome.