Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Trip Planner Fail

Because I was feeling masochistic, and was unfortunately forgetful of my last experience, I decided to engage in the self-abuse that is using the UTA Trip Planner.

So tomorrow I need to get to the university before my 10:45 class. Thus, I plug in my home address as a starting point, the U as an ending point, and tomorrow at 10:45 as my arrival time. Reasonable enough, right? Wrong.

The aforementioned masterpiece of modern computing returns five trip itineraries, three of which arrive at the U after 10:45. And I'm not talking, like, 10:47 - Itinerary 1 arrives at 11:02, Itinerary 3 at 10:53, and 4 at 10:51. Even the best of the planned itineraries, #2, arrives at the university at 10:41, which would more than likely still end up making me late for class. Good job, Trip Planner!

Remarkably, we have not yet plumbed the depths of the failure that is the Trip Planner. Itinerary #5 arrives at 10:21 - after transferring off a bus that would arrive on campus at 10:01, only to transfer to a third bus while we're at it. Going through two transfers to arrive 20 minutes later than I would have had I stayed on the original bus? I don't see why not!

Entirely abandoning computerized stupidity, I resort to a manual examination of two of my most frequently-used bus routes. Within mere minutes, I find a direct route that arrives at 10:21. There. Was that so hard, Trip Planner?

3 comments:

. . . said...
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Spencer said...

Hm, a deleted comment. How strange.

. . . said...
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