Posts about Websites

For me, the organization of the home page is not very helpful. There are a lot of random links on the left side in boxes, on the bottom in different size boxes, on the right side in a scrolling ticker, in the center in a rotating image, and even a few at the very top. Most of the useful information is in links within the navigation bar, where it's harder to find.

All pages on the site have a sidebar which is mostly useless. The top is filled with today's weather. How many people are going to go to the page for the Council of the District of Columbia to find out the weather? There's news on there, but why does that need to be on each page? That's the kind of thing that should be on the front page, but isn't.

I watch hearings often. If you go to the "MEDIA" menu, there are separate links Watch Hearing Live and Watch Hearings Live. The first goes to the channel 13 cable feed, which requires you to listen to a welcome message (ironically still from Chairman Vincent C. Gray) before seeing anything. The second goes to another system that shows separate live feeds from each office.

A lot of pages don't have much information on them, like Programming Schedule, which just has a single link to the OCT TV-13 page. If there's just one link, send people directly there instead of making them view an intermediate page.

There are multiple separate calendars. The first one, Daily Schedule, goes to an interactive calendar application which just has the names of committees holding hearings in the grid. You have to mouse over each one to see the topic of the hearing.

Other items, like the annual budget and oversight hearings, show up in yet another, separate list.

Most of the important information only appears on the Legislative Calendar page, which shows what's up for votes. It's just plain text, however.

A Hearing Notices page lists upcoming hearings, and that has gotten a lot better from previous years by at least including the topic of each hearing instead of a plain list of dates below the name of each committee. One remaining problem is that the URL for this page is "2011hearingnotices"; last year it was "2010hearingnotices." That means if I set up an automated script to notify me of changes to this page, I have to change it every year.

There are links for past hearings for each committee, also under "MEDIA," but that only has archived videos from 2010, For example, the
Public Works & Transportation Committee page has its last hearing on 12/14/2010. But if you go to View Past Hearings and click on one of the only two links on that page, you get the OCT TV-13 archives which contain more recent meetings.

RSS feeds would greatly help people who want to follow the council or specific committees. There should be at least a feed of hearings for each committee or one encompassing everything, a feed of bills introduced, and a feed of items for the legislative meetings.

In short, there are too many links, many of which go to pages with little information or even out of date information that's more complete in another part of the site. A redesign is much needed and very welcome.

How do you use the site? What could make it more usable for you? I'll pass your suggestions from the comments on to the people handling the redesign.

Mary Hynes, having noted the common complaint that Metro Tweets @metroopensdoors but doesn't follow anyone or reply to tweets, made the radical suggestion that Metro "[think] about tweeting back."

DC's Tom Downs said that years ago, Metro had a big electronic sign in the lobby showing performance metrics. As those metrics deteriorated, first the sign stopped getting updated, then disappeared completely.

Jeff McKay warned against letting metrics drive personnel. The metrics, he said, are tools for improving service, not ways to get a "gotcha" on a particular staff member. That's right, and if someone misses a goal a few times, it shouldn't necessarily warrant punishment. Perhaps it's the goal that's wrong.

Also, a good organization wants to encourage people to set ambitious goals, it shouldn't punish people for missing some of them. However, management should take a closer look at people who constantly don't make real progress toward goals, to decide if either they're setting unreasonable goals or aren't doing good work.

Downs and others also pushed hard on better communication as well as better processes on escalator and elevator outages. Downs said that WMATA "did a lot of stupid things" which got the agency into its current escalator mess, adding, "Admitting we bought some junk and are replacing it is an important part of the story."

Maryland Governor O'Malley spilled the beans Friday. WMATA responded by putting out a tight-lipped odd press release. We've pointed out before how funny it is that the WMATA press email list just announces the title of each press release and requires people to click to read it; that's even weirder when the title itself has no information:

When a train derailed at Farragut North on Friday, WMATA sent out a release with the title, "Metro News: Derailment reported at Farragut North Metrorail station." Unfortunately, I was unable at the time to get to the website to read the full text. Was the station open? Were they single-tracking? When was normal service expected to resume? Not for 47 minutes did WMATA send out a second release, this one titled "Derailment at Farragut North Metrorail station: station closed."

Compare how MTA sends out information to MARC commuter train riders:

People who get this press release don't need to swarm MTA's servers. The information they need is in their inbox. Even if MTA's servers go down, commuters have to only go so far as their email service to know where trains are running and any other pertinent information.

Ken Archer sent in a tip this morning that when he'd tried to access it, the WMATA site was again down. WMATA could beef up their website capacity, but the best solution would be to include fuller information in notification emails.

Metro's riders need to be able to get information, especially about service, during an emergency. The current system falls short, and WMATA needs to reformat how it sends this data to riders.

Find a station: The rail map page includes a "Find a station" feature. As BryanDC wrote, it sounds like a way to find a specific station by name.

It isn't. Type in "U Street," for instance, and the tool, based on Google Maps, suggests addresses around the world starting with one in South Africa. You're supposed to type in a specific address and find the closest rail stations with their distances.

The IT team will change this to "Find station near address." Does that help?

Service nearby: On WMATA.com, the Rider Tools menu lists Service nearby.

What I hear most is people don't know what "Service nearby" is and they don't use it. If you haven't used it, is "Service nearby" clear?

As with Find a Station, you can type in a specific address or landmark. But here, the site lists both bus stops and train stations within one mile, plus the exact distances.

Have you ever used this? If you have, how useful has it been?

We asked the IT team to change "Service nearby" on the main page tools list to "Service near address." They explained there isn't enough space and that "Service nearby" is based on Google maps' "Search nearby." However, on Google maps, that feature shows up only after you've typed in a location and you see a map, making it clear what it's for.

Positive instructions: Jane suggested that the trip planner prominently tell people what to enter in addition to what not to enter. The trip planner's address boxes say, "Do not enter city, state or zip," but that doesn't say what to enter.

Farther down, on the trip planner's longer form, it says, "Note: Enter address, intersection or landmark. Do not include city, state, zip code or any commas." But this is not particularly visible, nor is it part of the shorter form on the home page.

IT staff agreed this has merit. They will give greater emphasis to the instructions for what to enter. What do you think of the wording that's already there?

Which other tools on WMATA.com do you think need to be described more clearly?

IT staff at Metro are demonstrating responsiveness to the issues readers of The Transit Ombudsman are raising. And they requested that I ask you to be as specific as possible in your comments. They're reading what you're writing.

Upcoming posts will look at your comments on reporting problems, trip planner accuracy, and NextBus.

Tell me and our readers—including at Metro—what's bothering you about the trip planner, and what changes you'd like to see. A few years ago, I secured one small improvement: I persuaded Metro to scrap its maximum distance of 0.5 miles to a bus stop or rail station for which the trip planner would provide any results. It now offers options ranging from 0.2 miles to 1 mile.

Do you think adding a special link for riders to report problems with the trip planner would be a good way to improve it?

The goal of The Transit Ombudsman is to identify low-cost issues that are easier for us to get action on so we can strengthen Metro—and our faith in the power of our own voice, too. After you weigh in with your comments, I'll follow up with Metro toward honoring its commitment to be the best ride in the nation. And I'll report back to you on Metro's response.

Besides, why should you have to say "NextBus"? Weir asked this as well, and they replied that they wanted all of the calls to route through one place. Why? It would be far better to have a separate phone number for NextBus, which goes to an interface optimized to help you get your bus, and an otpion. The prompt could say something like, "Welcome to Metro's NextBus hotline. Say the number of your bus line, or say "customer service" if you want other Metro services."

I've avoided criticizing the trip planner too much because it's important to encourage agencies to innovate. Remember, Metro was afraid to release NextBus for even an unpublished beta test until they were absolutely sure it was accurate. (And then, when it launched, it was still not 100% accurate). It's far better for organizations to launch a bunch of technology tools quickly, even if they're not perfect, than to obsess about getting criticized for the smallest flaw. On Friday, OCTO released a Circulator iPhone app. Some commenters criticized it for being too rudimentary. Of course, more features would be great, but given limited resources, I'd much rather they released a basic app in a short period of time than hold it back for months or years until it's perfect. We can enjoy it in the meantime.

I'm glad Metro has a trip planner on wmata.com. They did a pretty good job, overall. But it still has its share of flaws. There are also user scenarios, like someone searching for a restaurant on Google Maps and wanting to get directions with a simple click, that the trip planner doesn't accommodate. And when staff start arguing that the trip planner is good enough as a reason not to keep an open mind about other technological tools, they've crossed a line.

Quite simply, Google Transit would be very valuable to riders. It would provide a service much better than what's available today. It wouldn't supplant the wmata.com trip planner, but would supplement it. That's a very valuable service. We could easily argue that it's so valuable, it's something Metro could spend money on, just as they spent money on NextBus. Fortunately for Metro, it's free. That sounds like a very good deal for riders.

You can help us make the case for why Google Transit represents a significant value add for riders. Have you used it in other cities? Post your story: what you were looking for, how you found the information, and why it was useful. An on the flip side, let's collect some stories about flaws in the existing trip planner. Did it return bad results, or did the user interface make things more difficult than need be? Please be specific, giving particular start and end locations if you can.

The biggest danger is that once they've sunk $500,000 into this, it'll be all the more difficult to then agree to release the data gratis. Right now, the debate is about doing something that costs Metro nothing, and getting a benefit to riders. After $500,000 goes down the drain, it'll psychologically shift the debate into one about whether it's right to do something that doesn't recoup the investment, despite the benefit to riders.

At last week's Board meeting, Metro's Sarah Wilson repeated another one of staff's arguments against this project: that it might cut into the money Metro gets from ads on wmata.com. But Metro only gets $70,000 a year from ad revenue on the site, out of a total budget of about $1.5 billion. That's four-thousandths of a percent of the budget, and probably less than Sarah Wilson makes.

Sure, every little bit helps, but if the $70,000 in ad revenue is such a concern, why is $500,000 acceptable for a contract just to find out about the possibility of making money? There's no way that working with Google Transit is going to reduce all of that revenue. Let's say it reduces it by $10,000 a year. Just to recoup the $500,000 would take 50 years.

Zimmerman also noted that better and more accessible trip planners could bring in more riders at off-peak times. Many buses and most trains are full at rush hour, but the commuters don't need a site to tell them how to get to work. The people who would use it are tourists visiting the area, and people riding to unfamiliar locations. A lot of that is off-peak. And every rider who takes up an empty seat on a bus is pure profit for Metro.

Anyway, Metro's real business is transportation. The ad revenue is a nice sideshow, but it shouldn't trump convenience to riders. Wilson was arguing that Metro should not help riders in order to force them to use the Web site against their will, all to protect this tiny sliver of revenue. Why not charge for the trip planner entirely? Should Metro promulgate a new policy that every train will pause for 15 seconds after it reaches a station and before the door opens, in order to force riders to look at the ads on the walls? What's the difference?

Of course, the difference is that the ad revenue is a line item on the IT department's balance sheet. If Metro gets more money in bus fares from riders who use the system because of Google Transit, they get no credit. But if ad revenue goes down, even a tiny bit, that might hit their budget and deprive them of the opportunity to hire more staff. It's a common attitude in bureaucracies and large companies alike.

The IT department clearly isn't going to see the big picture. It's the General Manager's job to do so, or if he can't, the Board of Directors. One of them has to stand up and say that it's more important to help riders and try to increase ridership on services with extra capacity than to zealously guard a tiny bit of ad revenue on wmata.com and obsess over a departmental P&L.

Next: Why Metro IT might be moving so slowly.