Tim Ferris on the reality of RTA

In response to Tim Ferris's "Claudia pens a beautiful devotional piece" comment on RTA

In August of 2006, for a variety of reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with any dissatisfaction with RTA services, I ended 9 years of daily weekday RTA commuting and rented a parking space in the Penton Media garage.

A week ago, for a variety of reasons that include yet another increase in the parking fee, a healthy dose of Green Guilt, and the realization that I need to sock away some money so I don't have to spend my retirement eating out of Dumpsters, I terminated my parking arrangement.

Having been out of the loop for more than a year, I visited the GCRTA Web site to get schedule and fare information. While there, I played around with the RTA Trip Planner.

The UI is clumsy and unfriendly, but that's beside the point. In my admittedly brief encounter I found the Trip Planner to be as effective at trip planning as Britney Spears is as a role model.

I selected Triskett station as a point of origin and the Tower City rapid transit station as a destination. Among the eight optional routes the Trip Planner presented, not one suggested actually taking the train from Triskett to Tower City. One route suggests taking the 75x bus from Triskett Station to Tower City Station. Another suggests taking the 75x from Triskett to the Madison/117th Station, and then transferring to the train.

I think the idea of the Trip Planner is cool, but at this point that feature doesn't really know the dance steps and can't seem to remember the lyrics.