A redesign of Bristol City Council’s travel information portal has increased visits by 50% since soft-launch at the beginning of April. The portal now receives over 700 visits a week, and rising.
Prior to the redesign, Bristol City Council’s TravelBristol website was just a simple webpage with links to information sources for different modes, the majority of which were on council homepages and from third parties such as Traveline, the Highways Agency and local bus and rail operators. Whilst the page was locally focused, it lacked a certain level of interactivity that modern travel information websites provide.
Bristol City Council told us that they wanted a fresh approach which integrated cutting edge journey planning and real time information applications (including social media such as Twitter and Facebook) and the ability for pages to be edited and created in-house by their staff. In addition, a mobile approach to travel information was required, one that would be accessible to all types of smart phones. Importantly, Bristol City Council wanted to take a cost-effective approach – one that uses existing data resources and makes them more accessible to the travelling public.
Following on from our ground breaking work in Dundee, Brighton and Hove, Tees Valley and Tactran, we worked closely with Bristol City Council to deliver the Beta versions of TravelBristol and TravelBristol Mobile. The main website and mobile app provide bus departure information sourced from Traveline’s Nextbuses data feed via an electronic Google Map. Bristolians can now look up departure information (in real time where available) for every stop in the wider Bristol area. Similarly, users can look up departure and arrival information for all stations by accessing a live National Rail Enquiries data application. Upcoming work will introduce live traffic and road works data sourced directly from Bristol City Council’s traffic management system – all presented to the public via electronic mapping and mobile applications.
At Steer Davies Gleave we anticipate that ‘crowd sourced’ information, and the way that it is analysed and presented, is the next big thing for journey planning, relationship building and behavioural change.
Bristol City Council has embraced the use of Twitter as a real time transport information service. Supported by social media training from Steer Davies Gleave, the traffic team now uses Twitter to inform on traffic delays reported by their new traffic management system, adding a public face to a technology that is normally seen only by traffic management staff.
Using Twitter allows Bristol City Council to reach a large number of people in a relatively cost effective fashion – those who use the website (the homepage automatically displays new tweets from Bristol City Council) and those who use the Twitter application for smart phones.
If you would like to discuss developing a new travel information portal or web app for your area or want to find out about how social media could be used for personal travel planning and behavioural change projects, please get in touch with Craig Nelson.
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