En français svp

Are you sitting down for this? Grab a throne: we’re teaming up with our westerly besties to upgrade everyone in Metro Vancouver to Transit Royale!

It’s one of several perks coming to Van now that Transit has been named TransLink’s recommended trip-planning app for the next five years — just in time for summer (and a certain sports tournament, we hear.)

What does our partnership entail? If you’re one of the 300,000+ people in Metro Vancouver who already use Transit each month for your commute to work, school, the beach or mountains, you’ll now have access to more ETAs, schedules, trip planning options, and other glorious Transit fixins.

TransLink has a well-deserved reputation for delivering a top-shelf customer experience. Last year, they outpaced every North American agency at improving rider satisfaction scores! Our new partnership tilts the ice in riders’ favour even further: it includes rider-facing improvements (like Royale) as well as behind-the-scenes ones which aim at improving service on the ground.

Here’s the nitty gritty:

Rolling out the green carpet with Royale

First up, TransLink is sponsoring Royale for all their riders, giving everyone access to unlimited departure schedules, additional trip planning options, and the TransLink Navy branding befitting a city of seafarers and Gore-Tex wearers. Our partnership also means TransLink can use Transit to communicate key service messages – like schedule changes, disruptions, and events.

We should note: TransLink riders love Transit. So much so that the SkyTrain (which, like a lot of rail services, doesn’t have official real-time data) still manages to surface real-time for 31% of its rush-hour service — all thanks to Transit riders using GO to crowdsource the train locations.

From GO to GOOOOAAAAAAALLLLL 🏆

This month, the world’s calmest fans are descending on Whitecap territory, and we’re making sure Vancouver locals and its football-lovin’ guests are equally prepared for their transit trips — without needing to dip into extra time.

From schedules to routes to stop locations, we teamed up with TransLink to make sure the city’s transit data is rock’em sock’em soccer-solid.

As we tiptoe closer to kickoff, fans using Transit will see other perks that we’ve prepared, like:

• Event locations and fan zones included on the map and in our search results, for easier trip planning
• Advisories that display transport options on event days
• Custom routing to BC Place Vancouver through the Last Mile for a premier™ fan experience

Rider-friendly feedback

If you’ve ever hit GO in Transit, you’ve seen Rate-My-Ride. It’s our rider surveying tool, asking about all sorts of things. From punctuality, to crowdedness, to cleanliness, to stop lighting, to bench availability, to “are the stop announcements too loud?”

TransLink riders tap in over 445,000 such pieces of feedback each month!

We relay that rapid-fire feedback to TransLink in real-time, and complement it with a comprehensive Customer Experience Benchmark survey each quarter. Riders share their perspective about TransLink service, and can rest assured that their agency is listening.

By working together, TransLink can zero in on the idiosyncrasies of Metro Vancouver public transit, add custom questions, and keep on top of rider sentiment as TransLink service gets overtaken by olé chanters this summer.

Debuggin’ detours

Detours happen. Luckily, Transit’s automatic detour detection uses special machine learning techniques to identify wayward buses when they drift off their expected path.

We spot over 200 bus detours each month in Metro Vancouver, and soon, riders will see them right in the app. We’ll show the detoured routes (and their stops) on the map, alert riders if their local bus is taking a more scenic route than usual, and load the updated route shapes into our trip planner so riders know how their ETAs will be affected.

Back at TransLink HQ, agency staff will have a city-wide view of Transit-detected detours across the network so they can keep tabs on any off-track transports.

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We’re not just thrilled about this partnership, Vancouver! We’re Vanc-over the moon about it.

Thankfully we’re even better at building transit apps than making puns.

We hope you’ll enjoy our copious commuting improvements the next time you open Transit, and please let us know if there’s anything we can do to make your rides across town even better. Thanks for riding. See you in the stands.