"I'm Chuck. And I Plan It."

Designing the routes and schedules for a transit system that extends into two counties and serves tens of thousands of people is part science and part art. We have a team of planners that strategically analyzes and interprets complex data to determine the best way to meet the needs of our customers. Meet Chuck, one of our Schedule Analysts, who strives to ensure our customers receive the timely service they need and deserve.

A commitment to service has always been important to Chuck. His varied career includes being a pastor, a choral director, and a janitor before finding his way to us as a coach operator in 1999. After six years of driving for us, Chuck took on his role developing and monitoring our schedules. It's no small task! "I interpret APTS (Advanced Public Transportation Systems) data. When you factor in the vagaries of weather, traffic, and driving styles, it can be like hitting a moving target. Planning for transfers and connections adds to the complexity, as do the different challenges between urban vs. rural routes. I work with a very talented team that has excellent synergy. We work together to find that "sweet spot" where buses are on time without being too early or too late."

Chuck and his team work 3-6 months ahead of any service changes. This includes spending time each week in the field timing and gathering information for our scheduling software. Schedule Analysts, like Chuck, are required to maintain their Commercial Driver's License and drive buses in the field to help plan and revise routes. "I get excited about the detail work. I enjoy getting out in the field to see how routes are working."

For someone who has looked for opportunities to be of service in his career, transit service has proved to be very rewarding. "Community Transit is such a positive and caring community. People are good listeners and encourage each other. They enrich your life like a family. It's modeled from the top down. Everyone is always striving to do better, to provide convenient and reliable service to our customers, some of whom are transit dependent."

Thank you, Chuck, for sharing your passion for service with our colleagues, our customers, and our community.

What's Going on with BusFinder?

As you know, Community Transit is developing a real-time bus information tool called BusFinder. It utilizes the GPS tracking that was recently installed on all our buses to offer customers a fairly accurate predictive time of when a bus will leave a particular bus stop.

Believe me when I tell you it works pretty well! But not completely, yet.

As we have tested the mobile and desktop versions, we have found problems with how they interpret our stop or bus data. We also want to offer rider alerts through these tools so you can know if there are impacts to the route you will be traveling on. Getting only the route alerts that are relevant to the stop you choose was a little trickier than we anticipated.

The BusFinder by Phone tool is a completely different animal. It uses the same data, but in a different way and will provide stop times for the next five buses, whether they are real-time or scheduled times. There are several issues unique to the phone tool that we are working on.

The biggest problem we have had for all these tools has to do with the complexity of our operations. On any given day, our dispatch may drop a trip, add a trip or reassign a bus. This may be due to traffic, weather conditions, mechanical issues or other operational challenges at that time. In any case, once these changes are made, a bus may disappear, suddenly materialize or turn into another trip from a customer perspective.

We want to make sure BusFinder captures this so it doesn’t show a bus departing in 5 minutes that is not going to be there. Or show no buses departing that stop, then suddenly a bus is there. This is how our buses really operate and what you should expect from a real-time tool.

Last week, we had a major BusFinder operational systems integration test (OSIT). This involved live buses, dummy buses and even our next bus signs at Ash Way, Lynnwood Transit Center and Mountlake Terrace. To our delight, many of the operational changes we were testing showed up correctly! But not all of them.

The best I can say is that we are “getting there!” We won’t give a launch date ahead of time. It is likely that BusFinder will suddenly go live and we will use our website and social media to get the word out. Once we feel confident it works well with many customers using it, we will begin a promotional campaign. Thanks for your patience. Hang in there!