By Tom Sowa
Staff writer
toms@spokesman.com
Jean-Paul Larocque spent six months building an intricate Spokane travel Web site giving bus riders maps and directions for the quickest route from Point A to Point B. In part he did it just to help him get around; the 23-year-old self-taught programmer doesn’t drive a car.
The site he created — EnrouteSpokane.com — is distinctly basic in some respects. The Linux-based online bus-route tool operates from a computer buried in his apartment closet in north Spokane.

But this site wasn’t that easy to build, as the modest Larocque will finally admit with prodding.

He started in June and released the early version in November. It uses large datasets of route information obtained from Spokane Transit, but also relies on a mathematical algorithm for finding the shortest path in a computerized graph.

Initially he called the site Trip Planner. When Spokane Transit announced its own bus-route planning site was about to launch, Larocque renamed his to EnrouteSpokane.His first version was simply a guide to find the fastest walking routes in the county. Then Larocque added bus routes after studying similar services offered by cities, such as Portland.

Even though EnrouteSpokane is still a beta effort, his site does things the newly launched “official” Spokane Transit Trip Planner tool doesn’t.

The official STA site — at Spokanetransit.com — was created for Spokane by Arizona-based transit software company Trapeze Group. Trapeze got roughly $23,000, according to STA communications manager Molly Myers.

STA officials knew that Larocque was developing his own site but it was generally assumed he was doing it as a student project. Larocque contacted the agency in 2007 and obtained bus route data for his project. He also uses GIS data found on the City of Spokane’s Web site.

Both his and the STA’s site look generally similar, offering a choice of a starting point and a destination and a choice of time to depart.

In a comparison test, both provided several options for going from 1400 S. Bernard to 3600 E. Sprague with a 2:50 p.m. starting time.
Asked for the least-walking option, Larocque’s Enroute said take bus No. 44 downtown, transfer at the Plaza, then transfer to an eastbound bus to the destination. Total time: 53 minutes.

The STA’s Trip Planner provided several choices. Its quickest was to the No. 44 in the other direction, east toward 29th and Freya, transferring there to the No. 33 bus heading north to Freya and Third. One would have to walk three blocks or so. Total time: about 37 minutes (with walking time added).

Both sites produce maps that show a graphic of the routes suggested.

Larocque’s EnrouteSpokane also lets someone choose the quickest total time with the option of walking when the time taken is less than waiting for a bus. In that scenario the tool tells one to walk about a mile from 14th and Bernard to the bus plaza, catch the 90 bus out to Sprague and Freya. Total time, about 38 minutes.

Both systems allow one to enter landmarks — such as libraries, schools or hospitals — in the start or finish box instead of exact addresses. The STA site renders it results faster than Laroque’s, in part because his site is a home-built system.

Larocque currently holds two part-time technology jobs in the Spokane area. He said he hopes to use the Enroute site as a business calling card; he would like to use his programming skills for other cities looking to design a similar online site.

“I wish I had started a year earlier,” he said, “because I might have been able to get the STA bus planner site up quicker (than the agency did on its own).”

Chris Tohm, an STA spokesman, said the agency sees Larocque’s grassroots bus site as a one-man experiment. It does not endorse his site, he noted.

Mark Curtis, the STA’s customer service manager, noted that the agency changes its routes and times periodically and unless he adds the data, Larocque’s site will be not up-to-date.

Larocque said he can track the changes being made by the transit agency and input the route adjustments manually.

While Spokane riders now have two online choices, another larger player could get into the game within two or three years. That player would be Google, who has just introduced a beta version of a mapping system called Google Transit.

Google’s marketing office said it now has maps and transit schedule information for roughly 30 agencies worldwide; the nearest are in Portland, Seattle and Vancouver, British Columbia.

For those cities, when you search an address with Google Maps, the service will provide an option to “take public transit.” To see a list of the cities included in Google Transit, visit www.google.com/transit.

Google spokeswoman Elaine Filadelfo said it’s not certain when Spokane’s data will be added. And for the time being, Google Transit is ad-free while the company expands its number of cities covered, she said.