TriMet: Pioneers In Transportation, 2.0

Recently TriMet's Chief Technology Officer, Tim McHugh, and the conspicuously named Bibiana McHugh, IT manager of GIS and Location-based Services, sat down with some non-McHugh fellow from Trillium Solutions, (Arcata, CA based transportation technology consultants) to discuss TriMet's efforts in making scheduling information widely available to its riders.

In the interview (Tim) McHugh reveals TriMet's involvement with Google Transit, and their use of the open-source Google Transit Feed Spec to push information out to riders in real-time. McHugh also reveals that TriMet was the first public transportation organization in the United States to partner with Google. Since then, TriMet has created developer.trimet.org, intended to allow developers easy access to information needed to build third-party applications for riders, and the platform is available, as Bibiana reveals, "free under the creative commons license."

Google Transit, with the help of TriMet's efforts in development, has since been deployed in to several other local transportation networks. Google has also managed to successfully integrated Transit functions into Google Maps Mobile, and even Google Earth. Quickly, Googles GTFS open-source protocol is coming to be favored by budget strapped public agencies for its ease of development, and compelling price points.

All this ground-breaking is not free, however. This year's September fair increase for TriMet was the largest in the organization's history, following nearly a decade of systematic and moderate price increases. But for TriMet to maintain its legacy of innovation it must always be prepared to invest in becoming more efficient and green, or eventually risk becoming insolvent as energy prices continue their inevitable hike. Another recent challenge for TriMet has been dealing with a dramatic increase of people commuting on Busses and MAX, exacerbated by The Multnomah Youth Commission recent victory in the City Council granting free rides to students from Franklin and Jefferson High School. The Commission initially was seeking free rides for all county students between the 6th and 12th grades, and thus also removing $4.5 million dollars a year from TriMet's revenue stream. Implementing the program for two area schools is estimated to cost the city $150,000 in its first phase, with no word on long term projection of its cost.

One thing is abundantly clear. In the coming years TriMet is not getting any cheaper, but will still be more economical then driving. So long as the City plans on replacing the traditional yellow school bus with TriMet and and gas stays poised near $4 a gallon a very real need exists to increase the number of busses on Portland streets, We cannot just sit back and bet on new MAX lines to alleviate our transportation woes. Has TriMet over-extended itself? Not likely, considering it is a critical and favored recipient of City money. A much more relevant question may be how critical? and how much and how far are we willing to go? In the mean time, I am grateful that TriMet is offering services that - paired with my iPhone - make riding a virtual joy.