Talking Tech with Edmonton Transit (ETS)

I was fortunate enough today to chat with Bruce Beecher and Dennis Nowicki from Edmonton Transit (ETS). Bruce is the IT Strategic Advisor for the Transportation department, and Dennis is the Director of Community Relations for ETS. Though we talked about a variety of things, the focus was technology.

I think there was some educating happening on both sides. I learned more about their situation and perspectives, and I hope they soaked up some technical stuff from me. I think it went really well!

What I’d like to share in this post is an overview of what we discussed. There’s nothing confidential here, but some of this information may still be new to you. They’re aware they need to improve on the communication side of things!

ETS has been evaluating potential technologies to deploy to the fleet for quite a while now (I wrote about some at last year’s Community Conference). These technologies include:

Automatic Vehicle Locator (AVL) – This is essentially a GPS module that would be installed on each bus.
Automated Traveler Information Systems (ATIS) – This is essentially giving riders access to that GPS information. That is, where is my bus right now?
Mobile Data Terminals (MDT)
Automated Stop Announcement (ASA) – No more peering out into the darkness to see if you’re at the right stop. Also important for accessibility.
Automatic Passenger Counter (APC)
Automated Fare Booth (Smart Cards)
Automatic Vehicle Monitor (AVM) – This would gather information about the engine, fuel consumption, etc. It’s like a black box for the bus.

Those are listed roughly in order of priority, though nothing is set in stone. In fact, the AVM might get bumped to the front of the list simply because it offers the best ROI for ETS. The ability to know what’s wrong with a bus on the fly would have a huge impact on the bottom line. Same goes for being able to determine if a bus is getting poor fuel consumption for some reason. Makes sense to me.

There are a few problems with all of this technology, mostly related to cost:

Edmonton has bumpy roads and extremely cold temperatures in the winter. On-board equipment needs to be hardened and reliable. We often can’t use the same stuff that San Francisco uses, for example.
Rough estimates place the cost per bus at $15,000. There are currently 903 buses in service.
By 2012, the number of buses will be closer to 1300, so it won’t get any cheaper to deploy.

Another issue is maintainability. Ideally, each bus would have one computer with a LAN of some kind that everything else just connects to, so that it’s all integrated. Otherwise you end up with many potentially disparate systems.

What I took away from all of this is essentially that ETS is keen to deploy GPS technologies and to make that information available to riders. The challenge is finding a way to make it happen.

Next we shifted gears and talked about the ETS website, Google Transit and my API idea (though I’m definitely not the only one with the idea…dub5 is another interested group). There are improvements to the ETS Trip Planner in the works, so watch for something during the summer. They’re also looking to improve the main ETS website, now that everyone has had time to digest the edmonton.ca redesign.

Unfortunately I can’t talk as much about Google Transit as I’d like to just yet, but I can tell you that a major announcement is coming in the next week or so. I plan to cover it here, and you’ll no doubt see it in the mainstream media. Bottom line: ETS is fully behind Google Transit, and that’s a good thing for Edmontonians.

As for the API idea? They like it and would like to learn more about it. At this point however, getting access to a dump of the same data that Google gets is probably more likely. It would work like this: you sign some sort of agreement with ETS outlining the terms of use (basically something like “I agree not to misrepresent this information…”, and they send you the GTFS data. From there, you could do whatever you like with it. You could build and release your own API, for instance.

Is that going to happen – are they going to make the data available? No guarantees, but they will definitely consider it. Obviously an API would be better for accessing real-time data, but even a recent snapshot would be a step in the right direction. I think this is very encouraging!

If they do go down the data sharing route, I think we should organize an API building weekend!

The final thing I want to mention is that we talked briefly about RSS. My goal is to get every City of Edmonton department publishing as many RSS feeds as possible! It’s horribly underutilized at the moment. I think Bruce and Dennis definitely understand the benefit of RSS, and I hope to see some ETS feeds published soon!

Thanks to both Bruce and Dennis for a great conversation – I learned a lot, and I look forward to keeping the dialogue going.

I want an API for Edmonton Transit (ETS)

When the new edmonton.ca website launched back in the fall, I was hopeful that the Edmonton Transit portion of the site would receive more than just a facelift. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. Though I’m disappointed, I can understand why. Edmonton Transit is not in the business of developing websites or software, it’s in the business of transportation. They’ve got to make sure buses and trains run efficiently and effectively first, and then they can focus on everything else.

That’s not to say that the website, or BusLink (over the phone), or the other services they offer aren’t important, just that ETS has limited resources and must deploy them accordingly. That’s why I think an Edmonton Transit API makes a lot of sense.

To build an application for looking up transit information, you need both an interface and data (I’m simplifying things a bit). ETS has all of the data of course – they know all of the route numbers, bus stops, and schedule information. What they lack are great interfaces. If ETS exposed their data through an API, third party developers could build great interfaces on top with relative ease.

Here’s the kind of information I’d like to see exposed through an ETS API:

Route Information – return name, start and end point, and other details for a given route
Stop Information – return coordinates, address, photo, and other information for a given stop
Route Stops with Stop Times – return a list of all stops along a given route with stop times
Routes at Stop with Times – return a list of routes for a given stop with stop times for each one
Search for Stop by Location – return the closest stops for a given address or set of coordinates

That list is similar to the information exposed by the unofficial TransLink API. A good starting point would be to simply clone what they’ve done! More advanced API features could include:

Route Interruptions – return a list of routes currently affected by construction or other interruptions
Stop Interruptions – return a list of stops currently affected by construction or other interruptions
Search for Stop by Landmark – return the closest stops for a given landmark
Trip Planner – return a list of route and transfer options for a given location of origin and destination
Information for St. Albert Transit and Strathcona County Transit

In the future, the sky is the limit. I know ETS is testing GPS technology on buses, so why not expose “distance from stop” information for a given route? That would be wicked, and incredibly useful when the weather dips below –25 C.

It’s not feasible for ETS to develop interfaces for each new platform that emerges. They have a website, but what about an iPhone application? Or a BlackBerry application? Or a Twitter bot? If they focused their limited software development energies on building an API, I’m confident that local entrepreneurs and software developers would build a plethora of interfaces on top of it. I would definitely build a Twitter bot!

There don’t seem to be many transit systems with APIs available, but that won’t be true for long. Here are a few others I’ve found: TransLink (unofficial), Bay Area Rapid Transit (official), Portland’s TriMet (official), Chicago Transit Authority (unofficial), Charlottetown Transit (unofficial). And here are a couple other resources I’ve come across: the Public Transit Openness Index, and a list of publicly available official GTFS (Google Transit Feed Specification) schedule data feeds.

I’d love to see Edmonton Transit take the lead and offer a completely free, fully functional transit API, and I’d be willing to help make it happen. In the meantime, don’t forget that you can now use Google Maps to find ETS trip plans.

Use Google Maps to find Edmonton Transit schedules and trip plans

Earlier today I stumbled across this thread on Connect2Edmonton which pointed out that Google Maps Canada now has Edmonton Transit schedules and trip planning features. I immediately jumped over to the website to check it out, and sure enough, it’s all there!

The ETS website has offered trip planning for quite some time now, of course (an average of 89,000 trips were planned each month in 2006). It works well enough, but it’s awkward to use. Everything you do seems to open a new window/tab, and it’s not the fastest service in the world. But the main drawback has always been that you have to know far too much information in advance.

When you need to get from point A to point B, you typically know the address of each, but you don’t know the bus stop number near each one and you certainly don’t know which bus to get on!

That’s where Google Maps absolutely destroys the ETS website. Here’s an example.

I need to get from my apartment building to the current Questionmark office in the west end. I live at 10350 122nd Street, and the office is at 11434 168th Street. Let’s start with the ETS Trip Planner:

Date and time of travel are no problem. The “arrive by” feature is particularly nice.
Enter Starting Bus Stop # or Choose a Landmark. Uh oh, what’s my bus stop number? I could go outside and look or I could try to look it up. Let’s look it up.
Okay not bad, enter my address and click Get Bus Stop #. Okay wow, now I have to choose from 14 different stops! I’m not entirely sure which direction I want. The office is northwest from my house, but do I want a westbound stop or northbound? I’ll choose the first one, heading west.
Now I repeat the same thing for the office address. This time I have a list of 7 stops. Again, I’ll choose the first one.
Now I can get my trip plan! Or not…some sort of error just popped up – “Error in Trip Solution Results”. Excellent. Honest I’m just doing this as I write.
I’m really not sure why I got that error, but I did the whole thing again and after about 30 seconds or so, I got my trip plan – six different route options. Shortest time is 46 minutes.

Now let’s do that with Google Maps:

I enter my home address.
On the pin that comes up, I click “From Here” and enter the office address.
Next I click “Public Transit” on the left pane.
That’s it! I have three suggested routes. Shortest time is 34 minutes, and each one includes walking directions too.

If you want, you can do a few more advanced things as well. Clicking “Show options” will let you choose the “Depart at” or “Arrive by” times, just like the ETS website.

directions

And it gets better! There’s no way for me to get back to that trip plan I made using the ETS Trip Planner. Unless I printed it right there, I’d have to do it again. With Google Maps however, my plan has a permalink! Very nice.

I would love to see ETS link to the Google solution. Competition might be a concern, but it’s probably a better use of resources to help Google improve their system than to continue building an inferior one. I think it’s funny that the “Local agency information” link at the bottom of the results pane is broken. You can thank the new Edmonton.ca website for that!

Of course, the Google Maps solution isn’t yet perfect. It doesn’t seem to contain as much information as ETS, nor does it include Strathcona Transit or St. Albert Transit (as Michael Wilson pointed out to me).

Still, if you need to look up transit information in Edmonton I’d highly recommend you look at Google Maps before trying your luck with the ETS Trip Planner.

UPDATE: Found the official list of cities with transit information at Google Maps. Edmonton is not on the list yet. The currently listed Canadian cities include Vancouver, Fredericton, Ottawa, and Montreal.

Touring the Edmonton Transit D.L. MacDonald LRT Garage

Edmonton Transit held an open house today at its D.L. MacDonald facility, known as the LRT garage, as part of Transit Centennial Week celebrations. Sharon and I decided to check it out, and arrived at Clareview just in time for the second last tour. I’ve always been curious to see where the LRT cars are housed and maintained, so I thought the open house and tour was pretty darn cool.

We were led throughout the facility, and got to see where the LRT cars are stored, where their various parts are worked on, where they are painted, etc. The D.L. MacDonald garage is an absolutely massive building, and apparently they are under construction to expand it further. It’s really quite impressive to see.

The highlight of the tour was definitely getting to check out the new SD160 Light Rail Vehicles. ETS will be receiving 37 of them at a rate of two per month, finishing in December 2009. Each car costs approximately $4 million CDN. As the new cars come in from Siemens in Sacramento, the old ones are shipped out for retrofitting. The cost for retrofits is estimated to be another $25 million in total.

At first glance there doesn’t appear to be much difference between the old cars and the new ones, but I’m sure there are extensive differences to the underlying systems (better electronics, for instance). A few of the noticeable changes include: cameras instead of mirrors, digital signs throughout, windows that do not open (which means they must have A/C), more comfortable seats, and slightly different mechanisms on the doors. They also seem a little larger.

The first of the new LRVs will go into service late this year. You can see many more photos of the new cars and the rest of the D.L. MacDonald garage here.

ETS Centennial Week: September 12-20, 2008

edmonton transit Today marks the start of Transit Centennial Week here in Edmonton, celebrating 100 years of public transit in our city. The official proclamation occurred today from 11am until noon at City Hall. All week you’ll be able to find displays, special events, free tours, and more.

The festivities get underway this evening at 7pm in Churchill Square. Local band Shout Out Out Out Out will be on hand along with The Whitsundays and the Trevor Tchir Band.

On September 14th you can see Le Fuzz, Ayla Brook, Manraygun, Ben Sures, and Robin Hunter and Six Foot Bullies, a musical event fit for the entire family. On September 19th at both 8pm and 9:30pm, Rapid Fire Theatre will be performing “Kiss My Bus”, a live play on a bus! They also performed this show earlier this summer at the Fringe festival. The big finale on September 20th will be Movies on the Square presented by ETS.

All week in Churchill Square you’ll be able to find information displays and the Big Tent right in front of City Hall which contains transit artifacts and memorabilia, film footage, and other multimedia displays.

For more information and complete event listings, including free tours and garage open houses, check out the Transit Centennial Week website.

If you’ve never been on the High Level Streetcar before, I’d definitely recommend it. There are free tours from 11am until 4pm on the 13th, 14th, and 20th. I think the D.L. MacDonald garage open house would be pretty neat too (the LRT garage…open house is noon to 4pm on the 20th).

Edmontonians flock to transit in 2008?

I never thought I’d write a headline like that, but apparently it’s true. According to an article at CBC last week, Edmonton Transit is reporting that ridership rose by 8% in the first six months of 2008 compared with the same period last year. That’s roughly equivalent to an extra 2.5 million fares. ETS called the increase “astounding”, but seemed confused about the cause:

“Buses are packed, the LRT is packed, ridership continues to increase at an astounding rate,” said Ken Koropeski, director of service development for Edmonton Transit.

The increase is almost three times the growth being experienced by other transit systems across the country, Koropeski said, a trend for the city over the past few years.

The CBC article cites three potential reasons: high gas prices, the booming economy and related influx of newcomers to our city, and the U-Pass. I suspect #2 is the biggest cause, but that’s just my gut reaction. I wonder what impact the growth will have on security calls, which have already increased 20% over the last three years.

I also wonder why ETS didn’t share any of this information back in April? You might recall that Statistics Canada released information at the time that said nearly 80% of Edmontonians get to work in vehicle. Granted the StatsCan information came from the 2006 census, but it would have been a good opportunity for ETS to dispel some myths about stagnant (or least slowly growing) ridership.

I hope the growth continues. ETS turns 100 this year, and will celebrate Centennial Week from September 12th to 20th. You can learn more at the ETS website.

In Edmonton, we like to drive

Statistics Canada has released some new data from the last census that shouldn’t shock anyone who lives in Alberta’s capital city. Nearly 80% of us get to work in a vehicle:

The new data from the 2006 census found that 12.7 per cent of workers in the city of Edmonton get to work using public transit, while 79 per cent either drive or travel in a vehicle as a passenger.

Statistics Canada said the reliance on cars seems to increase with the age of the commuter. While those under the age of 25 travelled by vehicle 70.7 per cent of the time, that rate increased to 81.6 per cent for those aged 25 to 34. The rate was even higher for those aged over 35, at 87.2 per cent.

The average Alberta commuter takes a car 84% of the time, so we’re slightly better than the rest of the province.

I guess Bob Boutilier, our city’s Transportation Department GM, wasn’t kidding at the ETS conference a few weeks ago when he said a big challenge is the “pickup truck and two car” mentality of most Albertans. Thanks to the census data, I now have a number to attach to that statement.

Some people like to suggest that we’ll never improve our public transit system until everyone experiences just how bad it is right now. Maybe there’s some truth to that after all. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the majority of that 80% have never been on a bus or LRT car.

That needs to change.

2008 ETS Community Conference

On Saturday I attended the annual Edmonton Transit System Community Conference. I went last year too. The free half-day conference, which started in 1999, is a way for ETS to share information with and gather feedback from the public. The event started with a keynote by Bob Boutilier, GM of the Transportation Department for Edmonton (not just transit, but all transportation). His remarks were really interesting, and his love for public transit was definitely on display (he came to us from Toronto, where he had a major impact on that city’s public transit systems). Here are my notes from the keynote:

This is the 10th anniversary for the Community Conference, and 2008 is the 100th anniversary for ETS.
There were 61.9 million trips in 2007, an increase of 7.8% over 2006. ETS is anticipating 63 million trips in 2008.
“Transit will never make you money.”
Due to poor planning in the past, ETS is having a hard time acquiring land for LRT expansion.
Another challenge is the “pickup truck and two car” mentality of many Albertans.
The current city council is viewed as very pro-transit, so there are two years to make serious in-roads before new members are elected.

Bob spent quite a bit of time talking about the “5 legged monster” that is the current LRT expansion plan. The idea is to try and capture riders outside the city, so they don’t need to drive in. This regional plan means working with 23 adjacent municipalities, something ETS is quite far along with.

After the keynote, there were two breakout sessions. I attended the Manager’s Update with ETS Manager Charles Stolte, and a session Exploring New Technologies. Here are some notes:

ETS will be hiring 240 additional operators this year.
Clean diesel bus acquisitions: 231 in 2007/2008, 57 in 2009, 42 in 2010.
The cost of hybrid buses has fallen to about $600,000.
LRT car acquisitions: 37 in 2008/2009.
The first new LRT car will arrive in mid-May, and ETS will hold a public showcase.
ETS is working on a “bus of the future” with features like padded seats, color signs, Wi-Fi, GPS, and TVs.
The U-Pass created 700,000 new trips in 2007/2008. There was a 30% increase in ridership at both the U of A and MacEwan.
ETS is losing over $3 million per year due to the U-Pass.
Centennial week will take place September 12th to 20th, 2008.
ETS is testing a new information kiosk called “Info on the Go” at Churchill Station. It helps you with directions, routes, weather, and more.

I found the session on new technologies really disappointing, since they only covered “Info on the Go” and nothing else. Apparently they are exploring the use of text messaging, wireless Internet, and email in addition to having a physical kiosk.

Attendees received a notepad, pen, and ride-guide, and a really cool 2008 ETS calendar. It’s really high quality, and is full of historical transit photos!

ETS fares could rise drastically in 2008

If you think a $59 monthly pass for Edmonton’s Transit System is expensive now, wait a year. A proposed fare policy would increase the cost of a monthly pass to a whopping $74:

Coun. Mike Nickel supports the hike, arguing transit has to recover more of its costs through the fare box. He rejects suggestions that the increase would lead to a drop in ridership.

“No I don’t think it will discourage ridership. Actually, people have to measure their other modes of transit against the costs of ridership. Gas is costing more for your car, insurance is costing more for your car.”

Actually insurance is getting cheaper in Alberta, is it not? And Mr. Nickel neglects to recognize that lots people (myself included) don’t replace a vehicle with public transit entirely, they use both. I save most of my money not on gas and insurance, but on parking.

Here are the prices in a few other Canadian cities:

Calgary: $75/month
Vancouver: $69/month for 1 zone, $95/month for 2 zones, and $130/month for 3 zones
Ottawa: $71.25/month

Compared with those cities, the proposed fare for Edmonton feels like a rip-off does it not? Calgary and Vancouver for sure have better transit systems than Edmonton does (partially as a result of geography and population density). On the other hand, a monthly pass in Red Deer is $58, so maybe it’s not such a bad deal after all.

Any fare hike would not take place until 2008, and it has to get to city council first anyway (currently it is with the council’s transportation committee).

Read: CBC News

2007 ETS Community Conference

I went to the Edmonton Transit System Community Conference this morning, and I have to admit it was rather interesting. I’m not a transit geek or anything like that, but I happened to come across the conference online last week, and a couple of sessions caught my eye. One was on new technology, and the other was on web technology. Other sessions included a tour of the LRT garage, an input session regarding the 100th anniversary of ETS (happens in 2008), and an information session about Edmonton’s Transportation Master Plan.

I recorded the welcome and keynote, which you can listen to here. Here are some notes from the two breakout sessions I attended. From new technology:

ETS has ordered six hybrid buses, two of which are already in service. Each one costs around $700,000.
They also recently finalized their largest single order of buses ever (over 200). The new fleet will replace all the old GM buses, and will allow some room for growth. The 2007 Clean Diesel buses cost about $400,000 each.
ETS is experimenting with GPS and other wireless technologies. Lots of buses now have a GPS transmitter on top. The only thing preventing them from doing cool things like an “arrivals & departures” board at transit centres is money.
Most buses will be outfitted with a camera system consisting of 5 cameras. The cameras record to a DVR on the bus that has around 1 TB of storage, and uses MPEG-4 compression.
They have new automatic people counters! Haha, kinda funny they mentioned this one, but it actually does make a big difference I guess. In the future it could be linked to some of the wireless technologies too so that ETS would know if a bus is full or not in real-time.

And from web technology:

The webmaster for ETS is the same lady who records the BusLink information, and the old station announcements on the LRT.
I came ready to complain about all the new windows that are spawned on the website. Apparently I’m not the only one with that concern! No word on when it will get fixed.
The ETS website is the busiest of all City of Edmonton websites, with over 900,000 visits in 2006.
They launched an online store four months ago, where you can buy tickets and passes. It has already done over $100,000 in sales.
An average of 89,000 plans per month were created in 2006 with the Trip Planner tool.
There is a lot of things they’d like to add to the website, but it sounds like they have to jump through hoops to be able to make any changes.
It was mentioned in passing, but it sounds like the City of Edmonton is gearing up to overhaul their entire web presence.

The new technology session was particularly interesting for me…I have long wondered if they were testing GPS and similar technologies. Turns out they are!

It was announced in the keynote that the recent U-Pass referendum at the University of Alberta passed with 84 percent voting yes. You can read more about the vote at The Gateway. The ETS staff seemed pretty excited about it.

I’m not sure I’d go to this conference every year, but it was definitely worth checking out. And hey, you can’t beat the price – free!

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