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Traveler Information Builds Connections on Puget Sound

Reprinted with permission from the  September 26, 2005 issue of Passenger Transport.

When King County Metro Transit in Seattle began planning for a traveler information system, the
agency quickly realized it would need a regional solution to achieve its objectives of increasing ridership and providing better customer service. Research into travel patterns had demonstrated that significant numbers of people regularly traveled across several service areas and across county lines.

Today, an automated traveler information solution helps hundreds of thousands of Puget Sound area commuters and others find their way to work, school, medical appointments, shopping centers, and many other destinations. People in the region can plan trips involving all public transit service in King, Pierce, and Snohomish counties, including Sound Transit's regional express bus routes, Sounder commuter rail, the Seattle Center Monorail, and Washington State Ferries.

The process wasn't always that easy. According to Dick Harrell, trip planning system administrator with King County Metro: "Essentially, the transit rider would have to piece together a trip plan one agency at a time. It might take several days to put together a plan, depending on call center hours and other factors. It was inefficient, demanded a lot more of the transit user, and probably discouraged transit use."

Recognizing that poor information accessibility poses a serious barrier to public transport use, King County Metro and its partners looked to implement a traveler information solution from Trapeze Group.

By 1999, call center agents were using the desktop version of Trapeze's traveler information system to plan itineraries involving multiple providers, multiple transfers, and multiple modes of transport. The following year, King County Metro introduced a web-based trip planner, bringing a new level of convenience to the public.

Today the call center handles more than 600,000 calls annually, while the online regional trip planner serves 2.77 million itineraries annually. People can plan trips when convenient for them, and can optimize search results according to the shortest trip, fewest transfers, or shortest walking distance.

The Trapeze traveler information system supports everything from highly centralized to widely distributed configurations. The approach for any given project depends on geography, demographics, transportation infrastructure, and the operational and technological characteristics of the participating agencies.

In the case of Seattle's regional solution, the autonomy of individual providers proved important. Consequently, each agency maintains and operates its own call center and trip planning software, and shares its data with its regional partners through an automated process.

Implementation of the system was complex, involving numerous scheduling and Geographic Information Systems, complex fare information, very different information technology environments, and other challenges.

"Trapeze worked hard to integrate many different systems and data sources and achieve a solution that met the individual partners' requirements and was also seamless to the public," Harrell explained.

The results of automating customer information services on King County Metro's operations have been predictably good, Harrell said. The average duration of a call has decreased as call center agents find answers and solutions more quickly. The agency is also serving more customers, thanks in part to the web trip planner.

Aside from the obvious advantages of consistent, accurate, and readily available information, he noted that the public has also found subtler benefits: the automated information solution has fostered other kinds of regional collaboration. For example, the regional agencies now consider for previous fares when customers transfer to their routes.

Thanks to their ability to see the "big picture" and think regionally, King County and its partners are building stronger connections with their passengers and with each others' services.

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