Trillium Solutions presented strategies for effective online marketing and easy-to-use transit information. They recommended that agencies (1) be visible online through search engine optimization and links from other sites, (2) simplify information on websites through clear navigation, maps, and timetables, and (3) be accessible by following web accessibility guidelines. They also suggested agencies empower customers through real-time arrival estimates, trip planning tools, and social media, and be ubiquitous by integrating with other transportation applications and sites. Finally, agencies should measure their online success through analytics to improve outreach.

1. TrilliumSolutions
Online methods for
effective marketing and
easy-to-use transit information
7 October 2011
Community Transportation Association of Idaho
Aaron Antrim | Trillium Solutions, Inc.

2. Our customers
are online.

3. •73% of all Americans are
internet users
•63% of of people in rural areas
•53% of < $30k/year income
households
•71% of 50-64 year olds
•88% of 18-29 year olds
Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project,
http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Internet_and_Daily_Life.pdf

4. The third most common internet
activity for Americans is to
“search for a map or driving
directions,” (87%) behind only
email and using search engines.
Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project,
(http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Internet_and_Daily_Life.pdf)

5. Here is how:
• Be visible
• Simplify
• Be accessible
• Empower customers
• Be everywhere
• Measure success

6. Be visible.

7. Have you
Googled
your
agency?

8. Other
terms?

9. To improve position in search
results:
1. Add relevant keywords to
your website
2. Ask other agencies and
websites to link to your
website

11. 11

12. Include an easy-
to-remember
web-address to
include on
vehicles,
schedules, signs,
press releases,
and outgoing off-
hours voicemail
greeting

13. Which is your URL?
www.ci.beaumont.ca.us/index.aspx?nid=90
or
www.eurekatransit.org
?
Cost for domain name registration:
$10/year at Godaddy.com

14. Simplify.

15. Best practices for Navigation
online timetables and
information
 Timetables
 Route maps
features
 System map
•Trip planner
Link to route map
 Online pass sales page
from timetable
•Travel reservations PDF
Downloadable
version
• How to use
timetables guide
Example from trimet.org

16. TimeTable(Publisher:
open&source&so+ware&for&
producing&web&and&print4
ready&6metables&from&GTFS.&&
More&at&
6metablepublisher.org

18. Change or add a stop
Redwoodtransit.org Choose a different primary stop * Arcata Transit Center
example Choose a second stop to display
No stop selected
alongside
Approximate cost Service schedule: Weekday service
Go!
to implement:
$3,500 Printable version of this page
Click any time below to see a complete itinerary of stop locations for that trip
Arcata Transit Center
Southbound Hour Northbound
:33 6 am :57
:37 :29* :16 7 am :29
:33 :14 8 am :46 :09
:59 :03 9 am :42 :01
:37 10 am :33 :02
:57 :46 11 am :30
:26 12 am :38 :08
:40 :11 1 pm :46 :21
:36 :17 2 pm :55 :30 :16
:09 3 pm :48
:45 :24 :13 4 pm :38 :11
:19 5 pm :54 :04
:49 :07 6 pm :21 Map data ©2010 Google -
7 pm :00
See larger map
:10 8 pm :20
:04 9 pm :47
10 pm :28
* Blue highlighted times
indicate the supplemental
(Mon-Thurs) schedule.

19. Printable version of this page
Redwoodtransit.org below to see a complete itinerary of stop locations for that trip
Click any time
example
Arcata Transit Center
Approximate cost
to implement:
Southbound Hour Northbound
$3,500
:33 6 am :57
:37 :29* :16 7 am :29
:33 :14 8 am :46 :09
:59 :03 9 am :42 :01
:37 10 am :33 :02
:57 :46 11 am :30
:26 12 am :38 :08
:40 :11 1 pm :46 :21
:36 :17 2 pm :55 :30 :16
:09 3 pm :48
:45 :24 :13 4 pm :38 :11
:19 5 pm :54 :04
:49 :07 6 pm :21

20. System and route maps
maps.trimet.org

21. System and route maps
pt.berkeley.edu

22. deltarides.com
• Interactive regional
map
• Multiple agencies
included (12)
• Cost for entire
website: ~$5,000

23. mbta.com
• Abstracted subway
system map
• Tabs to choose
between map styles

24. mbta.com
• Interactive street map
• Tabs to choose
between map styles

25. Mountain Rides
mbta.com
map (Ketchum, ID)
• Interactive street map
Cost: $3,600
• Tabs to choose of
Includes images
between map styles
stops
• Includes bike route
layer

26. Trip planner &
interactive map
• Cost: $300-$2,000/
month

27. The online customer experience
Pre-trip
Pass sales

28. The online customer experience
Pre-trip
Trip
reservations
deltarides.com

29. Be accessible.

30. Best practices for Accessibility
 Timetables
online timetables  Route maps
 HTML timetables are
 System map
browser-viewable,
 Trip planner
search engine friendly,
accessible for users who
 Online pass sales
 Travelsight-impaired.
are reservations
Avoid PDFs and images.
 Horizonal orientation
helps make information
accessible to users who
are sight-impaired.
Example from trimet.org

31. What makes an accessible website?
Explaining this will require some
technical descriptions. If you don’t
Article:
“Creating
understand any of the technical parts, just
pass over them, as they are not necessary
to understanding many of the more
important non-technical parts. The best
accessible
way to begin explaining web-accessibility
is to describe what an accessible website
is not.
transit
Accessible websites do not include
images, especially images for navigation,
without including hidden descriptive text.
Consider an image icon on a website that
websites”
a user clicks to navigate to another page.
Since it is not text, text-to-speech
synthesizer software cannot read what
this image represents. Unless the web-
designer includes an invisible alternative
text description of the image for sight-
impaired users, they will have no idea
what it is. Alternate text is also helpful
for search engine indexing and users with
Best and worst
slow connections.
An especially poor practice I’ve seen on
transit websites is offering transit
timetables as images instead of raw text.
While the timetable may appear as text to
a sighted user, it is actually transmitted
and displayed in the web-browser as an
image file. You can tell this because
practices
individual bits of text cannot be selected
and cut-and-pasted into a word processor,
and the text-size does not change when
Accessible vs. inaccessible: The original Redwood
with the browser’s text-size adjustment Transit System website (top), used a layout approach
features. These transit time-table images
Online at
called frames which hindered accessibility and search
are essentially inaccessible to sight- engine indexing. The new www.redwoodtransit.org
impaired users, as it is not feasible to (below) is visually-pleasing, accessible for everyone, and
provide useful alternative text for such search-engine friendly.
lengthy and highly-structured information
Providing only PDF files of schedule files
http://tinyurl.com/accessible-
can be fraught with some of the same problems. PDF files, while generally more screen-reader friendly
than images, do not provide the same quality of access as a well-designed webpage if they are not website
“tagged” with special invisible cues, and most are not.

32. Sendero
GPS:
GTFS data can be
used to create
transit point of
interest libraries
for sight-impaired
people to use
with talking GPS

33. Empower
customers.

35. Real-time
arrival
estimates
PDX Bus: iPhone
app for Portland/
TriMet

36. Real-time
arrival
estimates
Nextbus is one vendor for real-
time arrival systems

37. The online customer experience
En-route
Real-time
arrival
estimates
Goose Networks provides
interface to view vehicle status
and locations.
Provides mechanisms for text
and email alerts.

38. The online customer experience
Other vendors:
En-route
•Avail
Real-time •Mentor
arrival
estimates •Avego
•init
•Translōc
Cost: Between $1,000 and $5,000 per vehicle.
Maintenance costs vary.

39. 38

40. 39

41. GTFS-realtime
http://code.google.com/transit/realtime/
40

42. Be everywhere.

43. Everywhere&there&is&travel&informa6on,&
transit&is&an&op6on
Google Transit

44. Google Transit
is available on
most “smart
phones”
Twitter status
messages:
• “I’m thinking of
catching my 1st ever
bus since iPhone 2.2
got released! It even
tells you the bus
timetable!”
@timjennion
• Took a bus for the first
time in over a year.The
new public transport
option in maps on the
iPhone is brilliant!”
@helloBos

45. Planners
advocate
integrating
transit into
the
streetscape.

46. When does my
train arrive?
(trimet.org & 5 iPhone What time does the library
apps) Where’s a good close?
(Google)
restaurant?
(yelp.com & iPhone app)

47. Open data makes transit
information more
ubiquitous.
Open data enables
innovation.

48. We’re small and we can’t provide every
customized solution people ask for….
making the data available is something that
we’re very familiar with so that developers
can develop the tools themselves. It’s like
having an army of developers available to us.
— Tim McHugh, CTO, Trimet
[full interview at tinyurl.com/trimet-cto]

49. The Google Transit Feed Specification,
as a lightweight data standard for
transit geographic and schedule data,
has quickly become an increasingly
ubiquitous format.
And you don’t have to be Google to
use it.

50. PDXBus: A
free iPhone
application for
arrivals and
trip planning.

51. citygoround.org
Directory of
third-party
transit
applications
and agencies
that provide
open data.

52. walkscore.com:
Transit time map

53. Transit score on
walkscore.com

54. estately.com
Real estate search
site lets users search
by proximity to
transit. Estately
obtains transit info
from public Google
Transit Feed Spec
data.

55. Goose Networks
Multi-modal trip planning application uses
GTFS
Show all relevant options – including public
transit, private employer shuttles, carpool,
vanpool, biking, walking – through a single map
Show interagency transfers

56. Mul64Modal&Planning
Patagonia&4&Ventura
Show&all&relevant&op6ons;&7&carpool,&3&
transit&

57. Inter4service&Transfers
Genentech&–&South&San&Francisco
Transfer&from&BART&to&private&employer&
shuQle

58. transitandtrails.org
Connects hiking
trail and
campground
data with transit
(with links to
Google Transit).

59. Make friends.

60. Example:
Mountain Line,
Missoula, MT

61. Example: SF BART

63. Melissa Jordan on SF BART’s Twitter
feed:
“I think it humanizes the brand. That comes up
in quite a bit in the feedback we get from
customers, that they do feel a more personal
connection when they can communicate with
you in real time, and know that you’re listening
and answering their questions. So it’s helped to
align with the strategic brand initiative that we
have of making BART more approachable,
friendly, modern, and dynamic.”
(http://tinyurl.com/sfbart-interview)

64. Melissa Jordan on how NOT to use
Twitter:
“The majority of them [transit agencies on
Twitter], if you look at their follower versus
following, are not really following people back.
They’re just pushing information out, and I
think that is not the best use of the medium,
which is multi-directional. It needs to be about
conversations.”
(http://tinyurl.com/sfbart-interview)

65. northcoastjournal.com
Online event
calendar has two
clicks to transit
directions for all
events, using
Google Transit.

66. northcoastjournal.com
Online event
calendar has two
clicks to transit
directions for all
events, using
Google Transit.

68. Email newsletters and alerts
Inexpensive, easy way to stay in touch with
riders and community
Many low-cost or free options:
• Google Groups (free)
• Constant Contact (~$10/1,000 messages)
• Mailchimp (free under 5,000 subscribers)
• Newsberry

69. Measure
success.

70. Google Analytics is a free tool
for tracking visitorship to your
website.
More information at
www.google.com/analytics
69

71. 70

72. 71

73. 72

74. Questions to ask:
• Who visits the website? Is it a
significant portion of customers?
• How do they find the website?
• What partners refer the most
visitors?
• What content do they use most?
• What (mobile) devices do customers
use?
73

75. Putting the
pieces together
Examples:
Golden Empire Transit (Bakersfield, California)
San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit
TriMet (Portland, Oregon)
Mountain Rides (Sun Valley area, Idaho)
Redwood Transit (Humboldt County, California)
Trinity Transit (Trinity County, California)

76. 75

77. 75

78. 76

79. 77

80. 78

81. 79

82. 80

83. 81

84. 82

85. 83

89. 87

92. 90

93. 91

94. 92

95. 93

96. In review…

97. Use online information to:
• Be visible
• Simplify
• Be accessible
• Empower customers
• Be everywhere
• Measure success

98. Ques6ons?

99. Aaron Antrim
Trillium Solutions, Inc.
Phone: (707) 633-4464
aaron@trilliumtransit.com
Twitter: @aaronantrim
Blog: www.trilliumtransit.com/blog
TrilliumSolutions