Dublin Bus, LUAS & DART - Get directions in Dublin that uses all the public transport options - Hit The Road
hittheroad.iePosted Sep 7, 2010, 12:35 PM UTC
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hittheroad.ie
since Google shit the bed on including Irish transit in their directions, this makes my life easier. thank you! i will post feedback once i've used it more.
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Looks great, nice job!
It would be nice if the route didn't automatically update until you put in your new destination, or some sort of 'Submit' link. If I go back to the site having previously used it, it saves my last search. When I put in a new start point, it automatically updates (using my previous end point). Its not that big of a deal, but would be nice if it waited.
Also an Android app would be fantastic!
Great site, I have already sent it around to friends.
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We've tweaked our UI a lot and finding that balance between simplicity and usability is definitely a tricky one.
I'm going to add to the issue queue a development of a secondary UI - with a lot of these changes. I prefer a submit button that would allow you to change both points before finding a new route.
Android/iPhone apps are something we would like to do, but for now we are working on optimising the website to work on iOS and Android as it is. We put in place tweaks specific to iOS and Android to make it work better on each, but more work is definitely forthcoming on that. For one thing, I am the Android tester and currently my phone is in for repair so that limits our Android testing!
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This looks great, although I didn't really like how it updated my input based on what it thought I meant. Like I put in one address and it decided it was some other unrelated place. I'd prefer if it couldn't find it to just say that and ask me to move the pointer on the map or something.
I also second the feedback from others about waiting til I put in an initial end point. It's mildly irritating for people comfortable with using tools like this but I can imagine lots of confusion for people who aren't.
Anyway, nice job, it's been a long time coming.
Have you seen how Transport for London do their journeyplanner? Obviously it's easier because tubes are a bit more reliable in terms of journey time and the bus network seems to be better organised, but it's a really good tool that I use all the time.
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excellent site, let us know once an Android app is available! Cheers
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I'm one of the guys developing this site. It's not finished yet, but we're looking for feedback. Would love to hear of dodgy results, bugs, or heck something positive too!
Quick feedback from my iPad:
When I loaded the site it asked me for my location, I allowed that and it immediately directed me from my house to "46, Loughlinstown Park, Dun Laoghaire". I'm not sure why, I hadn't put in a destination yet.
Anyway, the 5 different routes to that address were all basically the same, using Dublin bus for the whole journey, with very minor differences. For a destination in Dun Laoghaire you'd expect the DART to figure at least once but it wasn't to be.
Your set of results should have journey times, and possibly be labelled based on the type of transport used or something (mostly inter city train, mostly dart, mostly luas or whatever) just having them as 1-5 isn't the most helpful. Also your little pop-up postit thing at the bottom of the screen acts a bit strangely on the iPad.
Other than that it seems to work ok, but really should use the train a bit more. There's no way I'd travel from near Blanch where I live to an address in Dun Laoghaire using only the bus!
The site loads in initial directions to show off the UI - I actually couldn't tell you how it chooses the end point initially... I should look into that.
We have in our issue queue the problem of several routes that are the same. We want to put in place a similarity metric and if the routes are 'similar enough' then not show both of them.
We are still tweaking the weights for DART versus LUAS versus Bus versus Walking, but ideally we want to allow users to enter preferences and to exclude certain forms of transport entirely if they want.
Journey times are a nightmare. Dublin Bus provides no information on this. Estimating bus travel times is a very difficult task (if you want it to be at all accurate). A very high-level estimate will hopefully be coming down the line though.
What does the pop-up thing do on the iPad. One of the devs is a major iPad guy, he won't be happy about that!
Which one are you? I know Ross, Eugene, and Eoin. I was supposed to be on the team at the startup day :(
edit: glad to see the app on it's way up! Hope it proves successful!
Hmmm.... to tell or not to tell. For now I'm keeping you in suspense about who I am. Dun-dun-DUN!
Looking through your posts I can tell that you're not Eugene or Ross, as you have a brother, which Ross doesn't and you haven't bought an Xbox360 yet, which Eugene has. The guy who I can't think of his name is still in undergrad but you have said that you're still doing your PhD. So my guess is, it's Eoin. Why did you leave the pub so early after GTUG?! You missed out on fun!
On a serious note, what's the plan for a mobile app?
Oh dear.... Stop prying into people's ids L.... genuineleather!
A mobile app is on the plans, but for now we are focussing on making the website work well in iOS and Android. We have put in place Android and iOS specific changes to help it along on both platforms.
I live about five minutes from a DART station, I select my destination as being just beside Pearse station and all my options are to take the bus which I know is slower.