10274 replies to this topic

[Victoria Watcher]

B.C. Transit says its new $3.8-million website, which went live this week, addresses some of the complaints about its old site, which was slower, harder to navigate and more prone to crashing when a lot of people visited at once.

That includes regularly crashing during snow days, as people rushed to check bus availability.

That hasn’t happened for some time now, thanks to a migration of web hosting from Oracle WebCentre to WordPress that was part of the redesign, spokesperson Jamie Weiss said in an interview.

The new site is also more mobile-friendly, since four in five users use their phones to access B.C. Transit’s website, which last underwent a major redesign in 2014.

The transit agency built its first website in 1996, at a time when Yahoo! was still one of the dominant search engines on the internet.

Today, B.C. Transit’s website receives an average of 200,000 unique visitors and 750,000 page views monthly across the 48 different transit systems it runs across British Columbia.

The Crown corporation’s new website was made in partnership with Northern Commerce Inc., a London, Ont.-based tech company.

Northern was awarded a total of $900,000 in contracts to help with the migration as well as design services, according to public bid records.

 

 

https://www.timescol...vigate-12095433

[dasmo]

Just pushes you to Google maps.

[dasmo]

At the very least show me where the bus stops are on a route. Lame.

[Mike K.]

The maps are still images, and they have a full resolution PDF to download. This really is something that would have been fairly novel in 2010.

Right on this page, you should be looking at a live location of all buses on that route, not an image of the map.

[dasmo]

The pdf doesn’t show any more detail than the last ones. Incomplete routes shown without markers for where stops are. It’s ridiculously lame. The downloaded pdf could contain that detail. Especially for millions spent.

[dasmo]

It’s especially important now because all the information at the stops has been removed….

[dasmo]

The site should just be a landing page that says use Google. That’s eventually where it takes you anyway.

[Victoria Watcher]

PDFs are not the end of the world, they do of course allow for very good detail even when zoomed in.  But they should show stops.

[dasmo]

The route that interests me doesn’t even show the full route where my son would get dropped off.

[lanforod]

Things Victoria really oughta have/get:
Live transit tracking on major map services.
A tram system, start with a couple of trams, Europe style - think Zurich or Vienna. Those should be far easier to put in than anything else and load triple what busses take right?
FreeNow. Get rid of the taxi cartel, open to other services.
Terrace style restaurants - the Covid era wood decks were a start at least.

Things not to import from Europe: cash only public washrooms. Never ending construction (oops, too late?), ubiquitous smoking.

[LJ]

That includes regularly crashing during snow days, as people rushed to check bus availability.

That hasn’t happened for some time now, thanks to a migration of web hosting from Oracle WebCentre to WordPress that was part of the redesign, spokesperson Jamie Weiss said in an interview.

 

Of course not having any snow days may have helped as well.

[FogPub]

Things Victoria really oughta have/get:
Live transit tracking on major map services.
A tram system, start with a couple of trams, Europe style - think Zurich or Vienna. Those should be far easier to put in than anything else and load triple what busses take right?
FreeNow. Get rid of the taxi cartel, open to other services.
Terrace style restaurants - the Covid era wood decks were a start at least.

If by "tram system" you mean the ones that run on railway tracks - no thanks.  Railway tracks in roadways are hell on pedestrians, cyclists, and narrow-wheeled cars.

 

A tram or rail system on its own rights-of-way with zero interaction with any streets (i.e. off-grade), though?  All for it.

[Victoria Watcher]

If by "tram system" you mean the ones that run on railway tracks - no thanks.  Railway tracks in roadways are hell on pedestrians, cyclists, and narrow-wheeled cars.

 

A tram or rail system on its own rights-of-way with zero interaction with any streets (i.e. off-grade), though?  All for it.

 

These options are too expensive and as noted recently in Toronto, goes decades over budget and timelines, and end up going slower than the bus, and of course to less destinations.

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 08 April 2026 - 12:27 AM.

[lanforod]

No, I do mean tracks on road. The only real challenge of those you mentioned is cyclists but avoid bike lanes where possible. The others are minor issues. Wheelchairs are an issue but trams help far more than hinder pedestrians and disabled people.

[mbjj]

We've been on trams in Zurich, Vienna, Munich and Bordeaux. The Bordeaux ones are very nice. Some of the tracks are even set into grass and they're all very quiet. I'd love trams.