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TIME & DAY OF TRAVEL
 1 Hour Earlier
1 Hour Later
START LOCATION
END LOCATION
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| • | Wed Jul 22, 7:00pm CfPT Monthly Board Meeting |
| • | Wed Aug 26, 7:00pm CfPT Monthly Board Meeting |
| • | Wed Sep 23, 7:00pm CfPT Monthly Board Meeting |
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TIME & DAY OF TRAVEL
1 Hour Earlier
1 Hour Later
START LOCATION
END LOCATION
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Welcome to the A-TRAIN Trip Planner |
The A-TRAIN Trip Planner is an interactive online utility provided to help Atlanta residents and visitors get around the city by foot, bicycle, and transit.
This resource is produced and maintained by volunteers from Citizens for Progressive Transit, a non-profit advocacy organization, as a non-commercial, open-source project. Initial funding for the project has been provided by Friends of the Earth.
The goal of this utility is to give users maximum flexibility in planning car-free trips around Atlanta. Users specify their start and end locations, a departure or arrival time, and any other preferences relevant to the specific type of trip. Currently, four trips types are supported:
1. Walk-Only Trips: These trips are completed entirely on foot, and are the simplest type of trip in terms of user input into the utility; in addition to start/end locations and time, the only variable is walking speed. This option will return the shortest trip possible using walkable facilities, which is defined to include all publicly accessible roadways and footpaths other than those where pedestrian traffic is expressly forbidden (e.g. expressways). Currently, no consideration is made for the specific level of pedestrian accommodations on a walkable facility; this feature may be added in a future version.
2. Bike-Only Trips: These trips are completed entirely by bicycle. When this option is selected, the utility will find the optimal legal route between two points based on user-specified cycling preferences. It is assumed that the cyclist will always ride in the street (it is against the law in Georgia for adults to ride on the sidewalk) and will observe one-way street restrictions and other traffic regulations.
Although trip length (in distance) is the base criterion in determining the optimal trip, users may also specify two "adjustment factors" that incorporate other considerations into the search:
• Facility Type: Cyclists encounter a wide range of roadway types in Atlanta, ranging from ones that are very bike-friendly ( e.g., dedicated bike paths, low-traffic neighborhood streets) to those that are very bike-hostile (e.g, large high-traffic arterials). Each segment in the trip planner street network has been classified by roadway type (major thoroughfare, minor thoroughfare, or local street) and by any specific bike accommodations (offstreet trails, striped bike lanes, or bikeable shoulders). With the facility type factor, the trip planner allows users to specify the relative importance of avoiding the most bike-hostile facilities when planning a ride.
• Topography: The other major factor considered is the amount and severity of uphill cycling over the course of a ride. The trip planner's street network was overlaid against a high-resolution digital elevation model of the Atlanta area to determine detailed topographic profiles of each roadway and trail segment in the network. With the topography adjustment factor, users may specify the relative importance of avoiding trips that involve particularly steep uphill sections.
3. Walk-to-Transit Trips (selected by default): These trips feature public transportation as the primary mode of travel. For trips where one or both endpoints are not directly on the transit network, walking is assumed as the means of access to and/or from the transit portion of the trip. (Users may specify how far they are willing to walk at each end). Each transit search returns two trip results: one that minimizes the total travel time, and one that minimizes transfers between routes. All of the major public-sector providers of fixed-route bus and rail service are currently covered, including MARTA, CCT, GCT, C-Tran, and GRTA. Additional services such as university shuttles and local circulators will be added shortly.
4. Bike-to-Transit Trips: This option is similar to walk-to-transit, except that bicycling is assumed as the means of access to and from the transit trip endpoints (if necessary). The same options that apply to bike-only trips, including the two adjustment factors, are also available for bike-to-transit queries.
Time & Day of Travel: The desired departure or arrival time for your trip.
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TIP In addition to entering a specific time manually, you can also make easy one-click click adjustments to the selected time (up to one hour earlier or later) using the provided slider. |
Start & End Locations: The desired departure and arrival locations for your trip. These may take one of several possible formats:
Walking/Biking Speed: Your typical walking/biking speed, in miles per hour. This rate should take into consideration the delay associated walking/biking in an urban environment (waiting to cross at intersections, etc).
Maximum Walk/Bike Radius: The maximum distance you are willing to walk to reach a transit station or stop at each end of your trip.
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TIP You may wish to adjust this up for trips where the start/end location is some distance from the nearest transit route. Specifying a low walk-distance cap under such circumstances may prevent the application from returing any results. |
Under Development: Other transit services will be added, including the Georgia Tech, Emory, and Georgia State campus shuttle systems, the Buckhead CID's "Buc" shuttle, the Atlantic Station shuttle, and several recently-added XPress routes.
A secondary goal is the addition of new functionality that allows for more robust and intuitive trip planning queries. Specific extensions under development include improvements to the address recognition system, the ability for users to save search preferences and locations, and a special interface for web-enabled cellphones and mobile devices.
Finally, a long-term objective for the project is to extend this technology to other transit systems outside of Atlanta. The initial focus will be on small-to-medium sized cities around Georgia and the Southeast that do not currently have trip planning utilities.
The core itinerary planning functionality is powered by a Java-based software package called Five Points, which is being developed specifically for this project. Although the software is still in the early stages of development, the plan is to release the code under the GNU General Public License and make the software available to transit advocates and agencies in other cities.
Other software components utilized in this deployment include Apache Tomcat (the Java servlet container), MySQL (the underlying database) and Ubuntu Linux (the server OS).
