Gold Coast Transit District Launches Website with GTFS+ & Live Bus Capacity Tracking

Website: www.goldcoasttransit.org

Gold Coast Transit District (GCTD) provides 4 million passenger trips per year with a fleet of 61 natural gas transit buses and 24 paratransit buses in Ventura County, California. Their stated mission is to serve the diverse needs of their community. They have been recognized by The California Transit Association with the Small Agency of the Year award for their accomplishments in serving their riders.

GCTD selected Planeteria to bring their website up to the standards of their mission statement. They wanted a “customer-centric” website that provided riders with quality, up-to-date information, supported their marketing efforts, and made it easier for their staff to implement updates. Furthermore, their studies had shown that 75% of their ridership accessed the site on a mobile device. They wanted a site designed for mobile devices and WordPress was used as the content management system.

Based on our surveys of GCTD’s community, Planeteria restructured the content so tools like the trip planner and the real-time route information were easy to find and use, especially on mobile devices. We also made the site fully ADA compliant. For example, we converted all PDF-formatted route schedules to HTML to work with screen readers. Finally, we made improvements in the backend like making it easy for staff to quickly put up alerts for temporary route changes. GTFS+ was a key component of this project which included live bus tracking API integration with live bus capacity tracking.

“The Planeteria team truly has been such a pleasure to work with, especially Heidi and Sandeep – just top-notch.  And, not to mention, we got through it during a once in a 100 years global pandemic when all of our worlds where turned upside down!  It required much more flexibility on timelines and patience with changes and I truly appreciate it.”