Ride The Rapid
I live in Grand Rapids. We have, in this great city of ours, a transit system like no other. Not only do we get a great play on words, but we also get a website that rivals most other transit systems websites. Ok, maybe not that second one. In fact, I’d say that the rapid’s website is almost harder to use then the Mats website.
So I thought, “who do I know that could build a better website?”
I spent hours just pondering how I could pay someone to build a better rapid website.
Then it finnally occured to me - “Hey! I’m a website programmer… maybe I could do it!”
Ok, seriously though… I’ve used the CTA’s website before to figure out how to get from Point A in Chicago to Point B, and it was super easy and almost fun. (I tried several different routes, trying to get something that was harder then “walk 5 feet, catch bus a, ride, get off, you’ve arrived.”) So I wanted to build something similar for The Rapid’s system.
So far I’ve worked on this for about 1 day in my spare time, and I’ve already got a website that uses Google Maps and can find your location and your destination and the closest bus stop to each of them.
The next step is to get the schedule info from the rapid’s website and have the site calculate a route for you. I figure if I have another whole day or two to work on this I can have it done. But, I’m working on it in my spare time, so no promises.
But maybe some day Rapid fans, we will have a website that truly does rival that of the CTA’s!
Stay tuned…
3 years ago