The DC Traveler

Today, Washington DC’s Metro subway and bus system launched a new and much improved website (www.wmata.com) for riders.  Their old site was clunky, difficult to navigate and was missing many rider-focused features.  And with ridership up, 5% over the same period – July – October of last year, the transportation system and website is sure to see new riders.

The new Metro website includes:

• A new interactive subway map that provides a pop-up with the station’s address (great for GPS users), link to Google maps, arrival times for the next few trains and any service alerts for that station.
• Real-time subway and bus status reports.

• Mobile services for WAP-capable cell phone or PDAs – including the Trip Planner, next scheduled departure for bus and subway trains, next train arrival time, and service alerts.
• E-alerts and RSS feeds, with options by subway line and period of day. Options include for trains, elevators and service disruptions.

• Metro subway map for your iPod.
• A much improved, but still not perfect, service finder option, that allows you to enter an address and find Metro service nearby. It still lacks listing the nearest Metro subway station, regardless of distance. So if there is not a subway station near by, people who ride the subway and then prefer to grab a cab, versus a bus, will still need to do some extra work to determine the nearest subway station at a location, especially in the suburbs.
• Links to suburban and commuter bus services that connect with Metro.
• Visitor’s Kit with a downloadable and printable Metro Guide in 11 languages.
• Information about delays, detours, and service during major events, such as the upcoming inauguration or sporting events.

Sadly, Metro did not link some of the more popular old pages to the new pages, so the old Metro links on older The DC Traveler posts will now link to a “page not found” page.  I did speak to a very helpful web designer at Metro, Lance Lucas, and he mentioned that many of the old links (hopefully the one I regularly used on all my earlier posts) would be routed to new pages as time allows.

Image – courtesy of WMATA.

______________________________________________________________

1 Comment