By Pepper Parr
June 28, 2016
BURLINGTON, ON
Mike Spicer is already grey – and he is in the process of losing the hair that he has left. Some of that hair got pulled out in frustration the past couple of weeks.
Burlington Transit has bought into technology in a big way – they want people to know when that bus is going to arrive and then make sure it does arrive.
Director of Transit for the city of Burlington, Mike Spicer replaces marches in the Santa Claus parade – he may be wearing an I’m sorry sign in the next parade.
The Transit people bought a technology that would let a person plan their trip on their computer – sounded like a great idea – at the time
The installation of the service didn’t go all that well. They still aren’t sure that it is working the way the advertisements say it is supposed to work.
Spicer sent us a note earlier today saying:
“Our web site is live again as we have been able to fix the issues. We would encourage our customers to use the web trip planner as much as possible over the next couple of weeks in order to ensure that all of the previous issues have been resolved. We have extended our testing for a few more weeks in order to closely monitor the site and software to ensure it is meeting our customer’s needs.”
So – besides being loyal transit users – you are now a guinea pig – testing the service. Keep us informed.
I don’t know about the trip planner but finding out when the next bus will be arriving at your stop sure has some bugs in it. I arrived at the bus stop at Plains and Shadeland yesterday and called the transit number and punched in the stop number as directed. I was then told there were no buses running on that route at that time of day. This was 3:15 on a Saturday afternoon on Plains Rd. heading to Hamilton. Of course a bus came. Had to use data on my phone to get into their website for the schedule. Not the first time this service hasn’t worked.