Trip Planner
Problem
The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) operates the second largest rail transit system and the fifth largest bus network in the United States. With so many routes, vehicles and timetables under their control, they needed an easy way for people to find the most convenient bus and train routes between any two points. In order to accomplish this, they implemented a Trip Planner on their website, which allows users to input a travel destination and a place of departure. The Trip Planner will then generate the most convenient itineraries to reach that destination, consisting of a series of buses and/or trains along with walking directions, if necessary, at the end points.
In 2004, the WMATA looked to redesign their website, along with the Trip Planner. They did not have enough staff to handle everything, and decided to hire a contractor to assist them.
Solution
While they focused on the main website, TeraTech was brought in, based on our expertise and good reputation in the community, to handle the Trip Planner. We implemented the TrapSoft SOAP interface for their redesigned website. This resulted in the migration of the planner, currently written in PerlScript, to the TrapSoft SOAP/XML interface with a ColdFusion user front end.
Results
The result is a Trip Planner that coordinates seamlessly with the look and feel of the WMATA website redesign. It occupies a prominent place on the homepage, providing functionality and value to WMATA’s users, and contributing to a successful repositioning of their entire website. The Trip Planner now averages approximately 50,000 itineraries a day, doubling the amount of usage from a couple of years ago before the redesign took place.
<< back to Client Portfolio
