Embark made a great video to launch their app. What I love about this video is that it playfully demonstrates how great public transit and mobile applications can provide people with a new freedom to be spontaneous and explore their city landscape.

Embark from Embark on Vimeo.

My one wish is that I could learn more about the Embark app itself from the launch video. As marketing, however, the video succeeds in the sense that I want to know more about the app after I watch it. Embark could make a few other videos that demonstrate its features, or perhaps they just want users to download the app and discover the features themselves.

Overview videos for Transporter and Routsey (apps for San Francisco Bay Area services) provide a nice example of videos that demonstrate application features.

In related news, the blog of the U.S. Secretary of Transportation (terribly named “Fast Lane”) takes note of open data and mobile applications with a post titled “Transit apps empower riders with information”.

This video shows a demonstration of Nokia Transport.

Brian Ferris and Alex Howard also posted their thoughts and notes.  (Alex’s has pictures and video, too.)

Maybe next year I will get out to Washington DC for the Transportation Research Board conference and a future Transportation Camp.  In the meantime, I appreciate that people have posted about the event.

As silly as this habit seemed, I knew that one day my phone would become useful for indoor navigation.  Indeed, recently Google announced Google Maps for Android mobile phones version 6.0 includes an indoor maps feature.  You can read more about this at the Google LatLon blog.

Currently, indoor maps are available for major airports, and some major malls and large retailers.  No transit stations are included.  However, Google allows people to upload interior diagrams of buildings.  If you want to see a transit station included, upload a map.

UPDATE (14-Dec-2011): Brian Ferris pointed out that interior maps are already available for some transit stations in Japan.  Here’s the list of available interior maps.

There are about 14,000 people who live in Trinity County.  Despite the small scale of the Trinity Transit service, the agency believed it was important to have an attractive and usable website.

Here’s how our team (Aaron Antrim, Paul Clay, and Selena Barlow) accomplished the goals of making Trinity Transit more visible and attractive as a brand, and of making the service easier for customers to use.

The website shows the Trinity Transit logo and brand by integrating it with the rest of the page.  Trinity County is a beautiful, mountainous area.  It was tempting to feature the scenery in the foreground of the page but instead we chose to make this image the page background.  Almost literally, it provides a “setting” for the rest of the site contents.  Customers identify with images of people, so we show a passenger boarding the bus in the foreground.

The primary focus of the homepage is the regional map.  Click a route and the timetable for that route appears.  The interactive regional map is an example of a design principle we used to guide this project: customers should be able to find the all important information with just one click.

This regional route map shows Trinity Transit service as well as important connecting services provided by KT-NET and Redwood Transit System.  This map is the same one that was featured in print materials recently developed for Trinity Transit.

Above the route map is a trip planner form that refers customers to Google Maps.  The trip planner form allows the customer to select a particular stop or enter an address, place, or intersection.  This is important because Trinity Transit serves remote areas.   Some stops are on the side of rural highways.  Addresses for these locations, and places nearby, are hard to find.  Additionally, many destinations may be more than 4 miles from a transit stop location, which is the limit of driving or walking distance in Google Maps.  Thus, in many cases, it may be easiest for customers to select a particular stop location  in the system.

A small link beneath the trip planner provides more information about Google Maps and mobile applications.  This page lists connecting transit providers with schedule information available through Google Maps, provides a General Transit Feed Specification data link for developers, links to City-Go-Round, a directory of 3rd party transit applications, and provides information about Google Maps for mobile.

Our team made information straightforward.  When we edited the site language, we asked “What is the essential information?  How can everything non-essential or redundant be eliminated?” This language editing carried down to the level of eliminating individual words.  For example, the caption and instructions for the regional map originally read “REGIONAL MAP: Click a colored route in the map to see timetable information.”  This was subsequently shortened to  ”REGIONAL MAP: Click a colored route to view its timetable.” Originally, the submit button for the trip planner form read “Plan trip with Google Maps.”  But because the header already says “Plan a trip”, this was redundant.  Text that describes the action of the button was necessary, so we changed the text to eliminate the redundancy and provide new information.  The new text is “See itinerary in Google Maps.”

The website is implemented using a content management system (CMS), so the transit agency staff can add, remove, and modify news items and edit other content without packaged software like Dreamweaver, and without paying for consultant time.  The CMS provides an easy web-based interface for adding and removing news items, and editing content across the website.

Check out TrinityTransit.org and let us know what you think.  If your agency would like a website like this, Trillium is available to help. The new website was created as part of a collaboration between Transit Marketing LLC and Trillium.

I don’t believe that any other state in the union has a greater portion of transit services that offer public GTFS.  Great job, Oregon!

Do you want to see options to take a bus half way then catch a flight?  Fly all the way?  Fly to a major airport nearby and then catch a train?  Rome2Rio will show you all these options, including helpful metrics like the frequency of each service.  And it will compare prices so you can find a unique deal that combines ground and air transportation.  Check out this example that shows travel options between Portland, Oregon and Eureka, California.

Prominent ground transportation carriers that show up in rome2rio results are Amtrak, Greyhound, Trailways, and Megabus.  Many local and intercity bus and rail services are included using GTFS data.  rome2rio includes more than 170 operators across the country.

The rome2rio blog post “North American buses and trains added to rome2rio” provides more information.

Update (20 November 2011): I asked rome2rio if all public GTFS is included.  They said yes, and provided a bit more information about the ground-based transportation options that show up.  This correspondence with rome2rio is at GetSatisfaction.

Here’s more from the event website:

TransportationCamp is a free “unconference” bringing together transportation professionals, technologists, and others interested in the intersection of urban transportation and technology.

After two successful TransportationCamp events in 2011 (East and  West) we’re coming to DC on January 21st, 2012. This is the day before the annual Transportation Research Board conference. Additional event details will be announced soon, but we encourage participants to sign up now. This will help us estimate space needs.

TransportationCamp DC is brought to you by OpenPlans, the Mobility Lab, part of Arlington County Commuter Services, and Greater Greater Washington.

A Horizon Air Bombardier CRJ700 (recently phased out of the Horizon fleet). The aircraft seats about 70 passengers. Ground-based services can provide alternatives to some short-hop flights. (Image from Wikipedia)

Serving regional airports that have less travel demand is expensive.  30-50 passenger aircraft serving these airports often fly at half-capacity.  Many travelers don’t like prop-aircraft, and instead prefer to travel on regional jets, which are less efficient and more expensive to operate.

Air service to small communities is useful for business travelers and important for facilitating connections with greater world.  One air link to a large hub airport provides a gateway for worldwide travel.  Recognizing this, the U.S. government “Essential Air Service” program is intended to allow small communities to maintain commercial service by subsidizing select routes that would otherwise be unprofitable.  The subsidy program is expensive: the approximate subsidy per passenger is $74, excluding the Alaska market, according to a 2006 New York Times article.

In light of  the social and business costs of reduced travel access, as well as the cost of subsidizing air service to rural markets, it makes sense consider alternative ground-based options for travelers to connect with hub airports.

In Oregon, the HUT Airport Shuttle offers frequent service from nearby towns (some with their own regional airports) to the Portland Airport (PDX).  The shuttle offers onboard wi-fi.  In Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, and Utah, Salt Lake Express offers frequent service to the Salt Lake Airport.

I’m sure there are many other great examples of regional ground transportation service connections to a hub airport.  These services make so much sense.  Because it costs less to operate, bus or shuttle service connections to an airport can operate more frequently than air service connections.  The greater frequency can reduce connection times at the hub airport, making overall travel time for all-air and ground-air itineraries comparable. In some cases, a ground-air itinerary may even offer decreased overall travel time.  Ground-based transit service is also usually less expensive for travelers (and taxpayers).  Passengers can use wi-fi onboard.  Finally, ground-based public transportation does not consume as much fuel or pollute nearly as much as air travel.

There are several ways that we can develop and promote ground-based transportation as a viable connection to hub airports.  Earlier, I posted about a Continental Airlines and Amtrak codeshare arrangement — a creative way to address the “last mile” issue for air travel.  Air/rail codeshare arrangements are more popular in Europe.  Creating more of these arrangements will make it easier for travelers to find opportunities to make air/ground transportation connections.

The travel booking site Hipmunk shows Amtrak and flight options on one page, helping travelers to identify the best value and most convenient in travel options. (See “Hipmunk shows rail and air travel options, hotel walkability”.)  A truly complete travel reservations site needs to show intercity bus, rail, and air options. Travel reservations sites will offer a great service to their users if they begin listing all available options, instead of exclusively air travel.

The public transportation and the travel planning experience better by with integrated travel information.  Many travelers already consider whether, for example, it makes the most sense to travel using Salt Lake Express from Idaho Falls to connect with a flight in Salt Lake City, or to fly directly from Idaho Falls and connect through Salt Lake City.  To make this comparison, it’s necessary to look at at least two websites.  The comparison process can be made easier with better travel information websites.  In the future, Hipmunk, Kayak, Expedia, Orbitz and other travel sites should expose and allow travelers to quickly compare combined-mode itineraries.

Does any blog reader know of any policy initiatives in the United States that recognize that ground-based transportation can be an effective, more efficient, and less emissions-intensive alternative to regional air services?  Can anyone share more examples of multi-modal partnerships and travel booking websites?

When searching for “flights,” Hipmunk returns a useful long-haul transportation option that most other sites don’t show, Amtrak.  Check out the screenshot showing travel options between Seattle and Portland.  Options are sorted by “agony” (low to high).  The agony metric factors in cost, transfers/connections, delay history, and travel time.  As you can see, Amtrak scores well here, presumably because of its low cost and comparable overall travel time in comparison to flight options.

It is not possible to book train air and train tickets under one reservation, though.  This will probably only be possible with greater collaboration between the rail and air carriers (see example Amtrak and Continental codeshare arrangement, “An air/land transportation partnership”).  Adam Goldberg, CEO of Hipmunk, says:

“Users can’t combine air and train into a single ticket because it’s not supported by any of our partners’ ticketing systems. If this becomes possible in the future, we’ll definitely explore it. In the meantime, the best bet is to do two one-way bookings.” (Gadling.com)

Momondo has also been showing Amtrak fares for over a year.  Kayak, interestingly, has said the site has no plans to display train schedules and fares in the U.S. market, but does display this information for European travel (“Amtrak goes the Hipmunk route with claims of exclusive deal”, tnooz).  Travel reservations sites will offer a great service to their users if they begin listing all available options, instead of exclusively air travel.  A truly complete travel reservations site should show intercity bus, rail, and air options.

See more about train travel search on the Hipmunk blog.

Another unique Hipmunk feature caught my eye.  The hotel search feature shows heat maps for walk score, nearby night life, cultural amenities, and other geography.  For someone who prefers to travel without the expense and hassle of a rental car, this feature allows one to select a hotel that will have everything they need nearby.  Below is an example of the Walk Score heat map.

Update: Read more about the Walk Score heat map at the Hipmunk blog.