Beginning tomorrow morning, Dec. 14th, 2005, Charlottetown’s public transit system will run with a revised set of routes, stops and schedules. The Interactive Charlottetown Transit Map has been updated to reflect these changes. Here’s a summary of what’s new and what’s not:

• The system of four routes has been retained, and the general territory of each of these routes remains the same.
• There are now “transfer points” at the Confederation Centre of the Arts, the Atlantic Superstore and the Charlottetown Mall. All four routes begin at the Confederation Centre and end at the Charlottetown Mall, and three of the four routes stop at the Superstore midway through their route.
• There are many changes to the specific streets covered on each route, the stops along the way, and the schedule of stops.
• There’s a new stop on Route #3 at the Farmer’s Market and the Belvedere entrance to UPEI. This means I can leave downtown on Saturday morning at 10:00 a.m. and be at the Market at 10:12 a.m., catching a return bus at 11:21 a.m. and getting back downtown at 11:46 a.m.
• Stops in the “outlying areas” — places like Mel’s PetroCan in East Royalty and Stockman Dr. in Winsloe — have been cut back significantly.
• The “return run” into the Confederation Centre through downtown has been re-routed for most routes, with new runs down Rochford to Water St. for Routes #1, #2 and #3, and a new run down Weymouth St. and along Water St. for Route #4.

• A new “UPEI Express Run” on Route #1 that leaves the Confederation Centre at 8:00 a.m.
• A new “Early Morning Express Run” on Route #1 that leaves the Charlottetown Mall at 7:30 a.m. and arrives downtown at 8:00 a.m.
• A new “Late Afternoon Express Run” on Route #1 that leaves the Confederation Centre at 4:05 p.m. and arrives at the Charlottetown Mall at 4:40 p.m.

I’ve made some updates to the Interactive Transit Map too, besides simply updating the routes, stops and schedule:

• The “map” part of the map is now resizable — as you expand and shrink your browser window, the map will expand and shrink to suit. This should make the application much more usable in different browser environments, and is a technique that the application inherits from RealCharlottetown.com.
• At stops — like the new transfer points — where two or more routes have a stop at the same geographic location, the pop-up schedule box now lists all routes stopping there. This solves the old problem that occurred when one stop’s marker overlaid anothers’.
• Transfer points are marked with a larger red marker. I may update this marker to make its function a little clearer (perhaps adding a “T”?) later.
• Google AdSense ad over in the corner as gone. I was getting a lot of ads for bus repair and bus shelters that didn’t seem particularly relevant; not surprising given the lack of text on the page.

I’ve got a couple more tricks up my sleeve that I’ll roll out over the next couple of days. In the meantime, the source code and SQL data files have been updated to sync with the live version. If you’ve got a hankering to help out, you could proof the data on the site against the printed schedules — I’ve gone over everything twice, but other eyes would be useful!