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.
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.
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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.
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:
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.
In collaboration with the Greater Dayton RTA team, Northern:
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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