Tag Archives: How To

Bus, GTFS

WordPress Journey Planner

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We’ve made it easy for you to add a journey planner to your WordPress website.  Help your customers, increase patronage and reduce support costs by allowing potential passengers/visitors to “self serve”.

Here’s the Three easy steps.
1) Go to the WordPress page/post where you want to add the journey planner
2) Click on “Text”
3) Copy and Paste the following code where you want the journey planner to appear

<object data=”https://addtransit.com/journey-planner.php” width=”300″ height=”520″></object>

You’ll then get a Journey Planner added to the page, just like the one below.

Have a great day!

 

Google Maps

Add Google Maps Public Transport directions to Your Event/Website

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Here’s the three steps to add Google Maps Public Transport directions to your website.

1. Check if Google Maps has Public Transport directions for your location

Click on the following link to find out if Google Maps has public transport information for your event’s location:

https://maps.google.com/landing/transit/cities/ 

If Google has public transport for your event’s location.. Great!!  Then go to the Example (step 2) below.

If they don’t have public transport for your event’s location. It might be because your public transport provider has not yet provided Google the data in the correct format.  We suggest you contact your public transport provider and suggest they get their data on Google Maps.  If they don’t know how or need help, tell them about AddTransit or send them a link (https://addtransit.com) and we can help get their public transport (ferries, buses, trams and trains) onto Maps.

2. An Example: Public Transport Directions Using Google Maps

Here’s an example of it could look. We’ve used “Times Square, New York” as the event destination.

Try entering Boston, MA as the starting address…..

 

3. Add this code

Here’s the code that you will need to add to your website.  You’ll need to modify the “Times Square, New York, USA” to be the address of your event.

<form action=”https://maps.google.com/maps” method=”get” target=”_blank”>
<label for =”saddr”>Enter your starting address: </label>
<input type=”text” name=”saddr” />
<input type=”hidden” name=”daddr” value=”Times Square, New York, USA” />
<input type=”hidden” name=”dirflg” value=”r” />
<input type=”submit” value=”Show Journey” />
</form>

Publish the updated webpage and that’s it!  Done!

Hope that helps and let us know if you have any questions.

Have a great day!

Bus Safety

Bus Driving Safety Round Up (Tips and Checklists)

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Whether you drive a charter bus, shuttle bus, school bus, tour bus or city bus, you know that the lives of your passengers are in your hands every day, and we want to help keep everyone safe, including you.  We’ve rounded up some of the best driving tips and pre-trip inspection checklists on the web for you to browse through.

Bus Driving Safety Tips and Checklists

We’ll start off with some inspiration from the NYC bus driver who never had an accident in 23 years of driving.  Driver Michael Sanua says, “The most important thing isn’t to win a beef with another driver, criticize someone who doesn’t drive well, or get where you’re going at the speed of light. The most important thing is to be conscious of driving at all times, and get where you’re going safely. It may sound boring, but that’s the secret, if there is one.” Read more of his story and his 5 driving tips here:

How NYC’s Best Bus Driver Stayed Crash Free for 23 Years

 

The US Department of Transportation reminds bus drivers to take care of themselves first.  Get enough sleep, eat well and stay fit to be at your peak performance behind the wheel.  Read more here:

Safe Tips for Truck and Bus Drivers

 

The Bus and Coach Smart Move Campaign offers a series of illustrated printouts to help drivers maintain their vehicles, drive safely in tunnels, and look at the whole system- from the driver’s personal well being, to the passengers behavior, to the bus itself- to ensure that everything is functioning well.

The Coach Driver’s Checklist

Safe Driving in Road Tunnels for Professionals

 

The West Carroll Parish School Board shared the School Bus Pre-Trip Inspection Checklist they use.  This checklist is printable, and has space for the driver to mark off each task as it is completed.  This checklist could easily be modified or used as-is for any type of bus.  You can view it here:

School Bus Pre-Trip Inspection Checklist

 

This Walk Around Checklist from the Health and Safety Authority of Ireland is also printable and provides space for the driver to mark off each item as they check its condition.  View it here:

Bus/PSV Driver Walk Around Check Sheet

 

We hope this bus driving safety roundup was useful to you, and we’d love to hear from you!  Please share with us how you stay safe on the road.

 

 

 

 

GTFS

Google Maps Bus Routes

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Getting your bus route to appear on Google Maps is easy with AddTransit.  Our easy to use GTFS builder allows you to create and edit a GTFS (General Transit Feed Specification) file.  A GTFS file contains the necessary information to inform Google of your stops, schedule, routes and fares.

Google Maps Bus Routes

You then notify Google that you now have a GTFS file for them to use, and subject to you meeting Google’s criteria, the file successfully passing Google’s validation and verifying that you will maintain the file going forward, Google will give you access to their Transit Dashboard.

Google also automatically uploads changes on a regular basis to ensure that their online schedules stay up to date.

Once the Google has processed your file, your customers/passengers will be able to view your bus schedules on the web in Google maps.

And the best thing is, is that the GTFS file is used not only by Google but also by lots of other companies.  This means that by creating one file you suddenly are able to make your schedule available in many different ways to your customers.

Have a good day.

GTFS

AddTransit: The GTFS tool to create GTFS feeds

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When we designed AddTransit, we wanted the easiest possible tool to create GTFS feeds.

After our initial reading of the General Transit Feed Specification, it became obvious that the GTFS standard was a simple solution that got complex very quickly.  Additionally, for big transport companies with their large IT departments, the standard seemed cumbersome as it used zipped comma delimited text files for documenting the schedule and route information, whereas for small companies even these simple technicalities were often too large a learning curve for them to climb.

Our vision, at AddTransit, was to build a simple GTFS tool that could make the GTFS format and it’s promise of easily communicating timetables and offering journey planning in multiple ways both affordable and simple.  We took the specification and broke it down into it’s key components,  designed screens that we believe are inherently intuitive and looked for opportunities for improvement in terminology and data entry.

We realise that creating and maintaining schedules is a challenging task by itself, even before you get around producing and updating GTFS  files.  That’s why we try to give you simple and straightforward solution to the complexities of GTFS.

Of course, the technical nature of the GTFS spec is still behind it all, but we hope that our great user interface, responsive customer service and affordable product will make your job of communicating and marketing a bus, train, ferry or shuttle schedules, so much easier.

Have a great day!

Online Ticketing

Bus Ticketing Software – 7 Keys to Success

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Here are 7 key things that your Online Bus Ticketing Software should have for you to be successful.

1. Journey planner

You software should allow your passengers to review a number of different journey options to allow them to determine the best route and time to accomplish their journey.

2. Online Ticket Payments

The system should allow passengers to make payment immediately whilst they are online booking the tickets.  Online ticket payments provides passengers the convenience and comfort of knowing their journey is secured, whilst at the same time reduces the likelihood of them looking at at alternative travel options.  Online payments is likely to increase your revenue whilst at the same time reduces the cash/payment handling at the front line.

3. Email Confirmation of Ticket Bookings and Reservations

The passengers should receive an email confirmation so that they fully understand what travel they have booked.  An email also allows them to refer back to their booking at a later date and will reduce the number of customer queries.

4. Passenger Manifest

A passenger manifest must be able to be produced for the driver or if available, the bus conductor or host.  This makes it quicker and easier for them to verify the correct passengers are boarding and departing the bus at each stop.

5. Customer Service Functionality

Passengers will consider online booking as just one more channel for them to communicate and transact with your business.  This means that customer service staff who answer telephones, work at ticket desks, etc. need to be able to review booking and travel information and make any necessary changes that are allowable within your bookings and reservation policy.

6. Reports (e.g. Forward Capacity, Historical Capacity Reports)

Your bus ticketing software should provide a number reports that allow you to plan both short and long term.  Such reports include capacity reports, that allow you to see how much spare capacity a vehicle has today or in the retrospective sense, how much capacity a vehicle had for a similar trip in the past.  This allows you to determine if additional capacity needs to be made available.

7. Payments

Of course online bus ticketing software is only a success if you get paid quickly.  You need to be able to ensure that the passengers fares gets to you quickly while at the same time maintaining a small float for any refunds that may need to be issued.

Well that’s the 7 keys to success.  There’s plenty of other things to consider, but having these 7 fulfilled will put you in a good position.

Have a great day!

GTFS

How to get schedules on maps:GTFS-General Transit Feed Specification

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Hi all,

Today we’ve published a new How To white paper.  It outlines at a high level what needs to be done to get your schedules on maps, journey planners and apps using the General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS).

GTFS - How to Get Schedules on Maps

Have a look and let us know what questions you have.  Here’s the link:  https://addtransit.com/tools/GTFS Display schedules on online maps.pdf

Have a great weekend!