How the Greater Dayton RTA’s Drupal 9 Rebuild Empowered Transit Users
Northern rebuilt the Greater Dayton Regional Transit Authority (RTA)’s website, enhancing user experiences, accessibility, and real-time trip planning capabilities.
Need to Know
- Northern partnered with the Greater Dayton RTA to rebuild their website on Drupal 9, simplify their user experience, and improve accessibility.
- The original site lacked mobile optimization, AODA compliance, and a consistent design, hindering user experience.
- Northern's strategy involved rebuilding the site on Drupal 9 with an improved architecture and design. To improve trip planning, TransitApp functionality and Automated GTFS Import were also integrated.
Client
The Greater Dayton Regional Transit Authority is the public transit agency that connects the community and citizens of Montgomery and parts of Western Greene Counties within the state of Ohio.
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Brief
Northern partnered with the Greater Dayton RTA to rebuild their public-facing website on Drupal 9.
The goals for the new site were to simplify the user experience, improve accessibility, and integrate the website’s functionality with the TransitApp planner to help users better map out their trips.
Additionally, the organization wanted to empower site administrators to make changes to the site and streamline their workflow.
standards.
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Challenge
The Greater Dayton RTA website is an important resource for over 6 million transit users in the Dayton, Ohio area.
However, the earlier iteration of the site posed challenges for many customers. It lacked mobile optimization, failed to meet the standards of the Americans with Disabilities Act (AODA), and didn’t have a consistent, predictable design, overcomplicating the user experience.
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Strategy
Northern started with a full user experience discovery, involving sessions with transit users and key stakeholder groups, including the Greater Dayton RTA’s internal comms team and the TransitApp team.
The team’s goal was to understand the original site’s capabilities and the additional functionalities needed to satisfy its internal and external users. Additionally, they examined the website’s design and branding approach, taking note of the elements users appreciated and what could be refreshed to better meet their needs.
Based on the discovery findings, the Northern team recommended the following updates in addition to the new site build:
- Integrate the General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) into the site to allow users to plan their trips using the most accurate, up-to-date route information
- Create a custom integration for the TransitApp and Google Places API to enable real-time mobile trip planning and route updates for transit users
- Refresh the site design to improve accessibility and streamline the user experience on desktop and mobile
In order to ensure that the site’s various components and integrations would work as intended, the Northern team conducted moderated A/B testing. They also employed an accessibility-focused user testing group to ensure that the website would not only be AODA compliant, but truly functional for all levels of users.
When the discovery was complete, Northern started rebuilding the site in Drupal 9 based on the user survey and focus group findings and the Dayton team’s specifications.
The site’s architecture was reimagined to create a more intuitive experience for users, providing fast and easy access to the features they need most. An updated design approach made the website more aesthetically pleasing while improving usability.
Northern integrated GTFS to allow for real-time data to be used for mapping, scheduling and trip planning. The team accomplished this by reviewing the site’s content and then sorting it into categories. Finally, it was mapped based on GTFS documentation, with the format modified to make it easy to read and categorize. Site searches now return content that is stored in nodes and database table structures, improving data accuracy and ease of use.
To complement the GTFS integration, Northern also implemented an Automated GTFS Import solution. This tool was built to transfer updated route data nightly to ensure users can seamlessly plan their trips using the most up-to-date information.
The tool was designed to log imports extensively, making it simple to track the status of the GTFS Import. If an error with the automated import occurs, the tool will send an email notification to the Dayton team. If additional overrides are required, the solution also allows Dayton to run imports manually.
To further allow users to better plan their trips, the team integrated TransitApp functionality into the website, in addition to the Google Places API to enable autocomplete for origin and destination location names.
Results
In collaboration with the Greater Dayton RTA team, Northern:
- Completed a seamless website rebuild in Drupal 9. (The site has since been upgraded to the latest version of Drupal, D10.)
- Improved user experiences by developing a mobile-friendly, responsive, and intuitive user interface
- Integrated the GTFS, enabling data-driven route updates and a built-in map
- Implemented an automated GTFS import, streamlining the integration of the GTFS onto Route pages
Integration with Service Alerts which display on the Routes they are affecting to further aid rider usage - Rectified website elements to comply with AODA standards
- Created a single source of truth and enhanced workflows for site administrators
- Enabled the assignment of multiple administrative roles with various levels of access within the site
- Empowered Dayton teams with simplified content entry and management
- Enhanced search options with a Solr integration and custom synonym management
Greater Dayton RTA’s partnership with Northern resulted in a Drupal 9 site rebuild that drastically improved user experiences.
By working to gain insight into the challenges faced by internal and external users, the Northern team was able to tailor the site’s functionality to enable users to plan their routes using real-time data.
The revised website streamlines content management for editors by providing features to assign content managers different levels of access. With these capabilities, every editor can efficiently manage their tasks according to their role and responsibilities.
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