A Better Port Authority Trip Finder

iPhone Optimized Port Authority Trip PlannerThe Port Authority of Allegheny County offers an online trip planner that is decent from a functionality standpoint, but the Port Authority’s website in general, to be as definitively accurate as possible, sucks. For example, it’s a table-based layout, the design leaves a good bit to be desired, the site’s homepage fails HTML validation with 65 errors, and it’s awfully slow. Plus, it’s one of the few remaining sites where you actually have to type in www or you get a Bad Request error.


So I’ve done what I could and nabbed the primary code from their main site and optimized it for mobile phones. Well, for iPhone in particular, but it should work relatively well on any mobile device that’s got an Internet connection. If you use the site on a mobile device other than iPhone, let me know how it looks / functions in the comments.

iPhone and mobile device optimized Port Authority Trip Planner »

Among the improvements I’ve made:

  • Reduced the footprint from around 76kb to 5kb.
  • Eliminated the unnecessary excess such as the menus, footer, and multiple tabs.
  • Made Depart by the default option for planning the trip rather than Arrive at. I typically find myself wanting to leave a particular time more often than arrive at a particular one.
  • Moved a lot of the optional stuff (like number of transfers, maximum walking distance, etc.) down below the submit button.

Hopefully it’ll be useful for people other than myself. If you have any ideas for improving it, let me know. But remember, I only have so much control over what I can do with their code (hence the remaining lack of validation.)

People are Talking, Talking 'bout People

  1. Nathan, you are a source of inspiration, as well as a source of my eventual lethargy later today.

  2. Nice! I’ve been thinking of setting up a simple link to their PDFs for those of us with smartphones / iPhones but the list would be more useful to me rather than anyone else, as I’d only list the routes I primarily took.

    It’s too bad the Port Authority wouldn’t put more effort into their site, specifically a mobile version…it’d be such a useful tool and would surely eliminate a ton of calls coming in to their station.

    I once questioned them about why their site was done so poorly and the response was told by a customer support agent that they actually thought the site was up to snuff. Anyway, best we do for ourselves what the pros can’t do for us. :)

  3. This is such a great time saver and now I have a lovely new widget for my iphone. It even has a nifty bus icon. Thanks!

  4. Anyway, best we do for ourselves what the pros can’t do for us

    “Pros.” Ha.

  5. Awesome! Now all I have to do is buy an iPhone…

    The Port Authority website is all sorts of pain. First of all, some things such as “Way To Go” maps that sort-of resemble Oakland and Downtown system maps are nowhere to be found except on schedule racks. Some maps of routes surrounding busway stations can only be found in person on the busways. Some nstructional guides such as “Riding the Bus 101″ and the “Ride Guide” are also absent. Also, they system map that is online lists Three Rivers Stadium. Ugh. But, if you dig (Search 2 – Time Point Search under hand Schedules), you can find a list of every stop for every route, which is very useful.

  6. Hey Brent – I’m hoping this works on a normal cell phone’s browser – which it should – but I haven’t had the chance to try it out…

  7. Here’s a quick and dirty form that you can use to jump right to a PDF schedule without having to go through the Port Authority site:

    Port Authority Hand Schedule Lookup

    Nathan, feel free to link to it from your tool, or even make a form on your site that posts to the address. How do iPhones handle PDFs?

  8. Jake, that’s a good tool. And it shows Port Authority doesn’t remove old schedules, try 501 or 50B and old routes are brought back from the dead… yes I know that’s not practical for anything.

  9. [...] with RSS. You can also register and don’t be afraid to make with the comments!After I created this mobile-optimized version of the Port Authority’s trip finder, Jake from 42harold.org sent me some code and permission to style up his own creation, an extremely [...]

  10. FWIW, you can use the same scheme for links to PDF to link to GIF versions of the schedules (e.g. gifs & PDFs).

    We’ve used that for links from http://buskarma.com/ which provides port authority schedule data in a simpler way that works well on mobile devices as well; although we don’t have a trip planner.

    I’m happy to add your trip planner front end into my treo’s arsenal along with buskarma, google transit, and of course port authority’s own site.

  11. Nice one, Anukul. I’ve just had a quick look through your site but it looks pretty useful and thanks for the link!

  12. hence all these comments!,

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