NDinfo.org: Building a Regional Transit Travel Information System David Ripplinger Associate Research Fellow Small Urban & Rural Transit Center Upper Great.

NDinfo.org: Building a Regional Transit Travel

Information System

David RipplingerAssociate Research Fellow

Small Urban & Rural Transit CenterUpper Great Plains Transportation Institute

North Dakota State University

October 20, 2008Rural and Intercity Bus Conference

Omaha, Nebraska

Outline

• Background & Motivation

• Initial Effort• Retooled Project• Current Status• Next Steps• Concluding Remarks

Background & Motivation

• Value of Information• Transit fare and

schedule information• Economies of scale• Coordinate regional

multimodal trips• Leveraging the

internet• Statewide effort

Initial Effort• Project began in 2003 • Part of a larger effort• Ambitious in scope– Fare and schedule

information dissemination

– Scheduling, reservation, billing

• Sustainability• Agency updates• Launched in 2004

New Plan• The motivation was

sound• The plan was too

ambitious• The database was

corrupt• The language was

obsolete• …start from scratch

First Phase

• Objective: Basic Functionality• Online Searchable Database

-Service information for all 5307 and 5311 providers

-Web design and development-Maintenance and profile updates

Second Phase

• Maintain the functionality of first phase

• Maintenance and data updates

• Static maps of routes/service areas

• Trip itinerary planning tool– Google Transit– Database

http://ndinfo.org/

Currently Under Development: Static Maps

Static Map Development Page Link

Currently Under Development: Google Transit

• Exploring potential as a platform for building multiagency, regional trips

• Related project: Fargo-Moorhead MAT Bus

Currently Under Development: Database Trip Planner

• Similar to original planned functionality– City-to-City search– Multi-leg trips

• System control

Next Steps…

• Maintain the existing system

• Maps• City-to-City Search• Reservation/

Scheduling• …not to get ahead

of ourselves

Concluding Remarks

"inch by inch life's a cinch, yard by yard life is hard"