Automated Transit Schedule Publishing

Introduction

For many transit organizations, the current method for producing their printed and on-line transit schedules involves a very labor-intensive, manual process. In larger agencies, the schedule data is typically stored in a master scheduling database, such as Trapeze® or Hastus. Even so, because publishing this information is not the primary aim of such systems, it is not a simple process to extract the data for publishing purposes. Therefore, the process to produce published transit timetables from the scheduling data often still requires a great deal of manual intervention.

This is where we come in!

The heart of our automated solution is a product called TransitWriter™. TransitWriter was developed by Finite Matters, Ltd. (FML), and is a transit-specific variation of their flagship database publishing product, PatternStream™. PatternStream is a powerful cross-industry database publishing application used to produce a wide variety of output, including: technical manuals, product catalogs, directories, and other large documents and online information. TransitWriter leverages the power of PatternStream to enable automated database pubishing of transit timetable information.

As the only FML Reseller to provide all aspects of design, development, training, and implementation, Beige Technologies works directly with transit agencies to implement TransitWriter-based solutions and develops innovative extensions to the publishing process to address the needs of our customers.

Our successful automated solutions allow transit organizations to dramatically improve and expedite the production of their printed and online transit schedules.

The Problem with the Current Process

The process for manually producing transit schedules involves extremely tedious and time-consuming manual formatting and editing to compose the final product for each schedule produced. Some of the significant impacts this imposes on transit organizations include:

• Higher production costs
• Higher probability for error
• Longer lead time to print
• Inefficient use of staff and resources

With our automated solution, transit organizations are able to lift the burden of the tedious process of schedule publishing from their talented production staff; saving them time and money and improving the overall efficiency of the production process.

Even in the case where a scheduling database is used, the typical process for producing transit schedules still involves a series of time-consuming and error-prone steps. Although the data extracted from the scheduling database provides the schedule information, there is still a great deal of manual cutting, pasting, and formatting necessary to produce the final documents for print.

Additional manual steps are then required to reformat this information for presentation on the web, and to produce any other output formats — such as kiosk signs, passenger notices, and other output requirements. There is no question that the time and resources required to produce these transit schedules can be better utilized!

Using our automated solution, transit organizations can alleviate these issues and dramatically improve the transit schedule publishing process.

---

The Benefits of Automation

Through our powerful automated publishing process, the transit schedule data is first extracted from the scheduling database. Requiring minimal manual intervention, the information is then formatted and published for print and online output. Data integrity is preserved because the information is derived from the scheduling database.

An automated publishing solution to produce the transit schedules provides numerous benefits, such as:

Retained accuracy of schedule data Efficiency Cost savings Faster production Flexible design

Limitless output options Immediate revisions Ease of revision Better use of resources

Examples of generated output options nclude:

Printed and on-line transit guides;
Bus books;
Passenger notices;
Kiosk signs;
Online output formats include: HTML; Accessible HTML; XML; PDF; eBooks and other formats for handheld devices.

---

The Automated Publishing Process

The automated publishing process is accomplished through a template-driven system, where data stored within a publishing database is mapped and formatted across a series of "templates" to achieve the desired output. Let's examine more closely the components of this system.

As illustrated in the following figure, the key components in the automated publishing process are:

The Automated Publishing System Components

Each of these components are examined in more detail below.

The Publishing Database

The first step in the automated publishing process is to load the schedule data into the the Publishing Database. The Publishing database contains the source data and specific publishing criteria that is used to produce the transit schedule documents.

The Publishing database is typically a Microsoft Access database, but can be any ODBC-compliant database such as SQL Server or Oracle, etc. The Publishing database is made available to TransitWriter as an ODBC data source. It contains the pertinent schedule data that is loaded from the scheduling database, and also includes information that is specific and important to the pulishing process — information that the scheduling DB does include or manage.

This publishing-specific information is entered and maintained by the production team either through Microsoft Access or via the TransitWriter Graphical User Interface (GUI). The TransitWriter GUI provides a user-friendly means to enter and edit certain information stored in the publishing database.

The Database Publishing Application - TransitWriter

TransitWriter is the Database Publishing Application designed specifically for the transit industry. TransitWriter communicates with the Publishing database and specifies how to publish the information contained within it to produce the desired output.

A TransitWriter Project Pattern Set — or PSet file — is developed for each unique publishing project. The PSet file contains all of the publishing information used to "extract" the data from the Publishing database and build and format the FrameMaker documents from pre-designed document templates.

When the user chooses the option to generate the route documents, TransitWriter follows a logical heirarchy by which it constructs the output documents as defined within the PSet file using the specified document template(s).

The resulting output can be any of the following, or some variation thereof:

• a single FrameMaker document containing individual or multiple schedules;
• several separate FrameMaker documents; or
• a complete FrameMaker book file comprised of several individual documents.

See output samples >>>

For a given project, the PSet file is designed and refined through an iterative process whereby the results can be tested, reworked, and retested until the desired output is achieved. Once the project design is finalized, the Project patternset is simply opened & "Run" to republish a new set of schedule documents.

TransitWriter provides a user-friendly GUI interface to the Publishing Database. Using TransitWriter, users can modify the data contained in the publishing database without needing to understand Microsoft Access. Certain edits to the data will remain persistent — ie: will not be overwritten when new schedule data is loaded into the database. For example, any modifications to stop (or place) names, schedule descriptions/titles, and other special notes and information that needs to be published to the printed or online documents will remain persistent.

TransitWriter provides a flexible mechanism for incorporating auxiliary information that can be manipulated as needed to produce the desired results in the published documents, such as custom schedule notes, rider alerts, and other customer-specific stop or route information.

The Document Publishing Engine - Adobe FrameMaker

Adobe FrameMaker is the Document Publishing Engine used to produce the transit schedule documents. Document templates are designed in FrameMaker, and through the iterative development process, can be manipulated "on the fly" while testing the resulting output to achieve the desired results.

The typical development process begins with a set of base TransitWriter and FrameMaker templates that serve as the starting point for constructing a publishing project specific to the transit organization's output requirements.

Once the templates have been designed, the publishing process for producing the printed schedules involves only a few simple steps, as shown here:

Through the TransitWriter GUI, load any new schedule data from the scheduling database.
From TransitWriter, "run" the PSet file to generate the FrameMaker schedule documents.
Perform any manual edits to the FrameMaker documents, if necessary.
Save as PDF for delivery to printing service provider.

---

The Web Publishing Application - WebWorks Publisher

WebWorks Publisher Professional is the Web Publishing Application. WebWorks Publisher is a flexible and powerful single-source publishing tool used to generate multiple online output formats from the same source documents that are used to generate printed output. WebWorks is a template-driven application that enables global output formatting to be controlled by designing and mapping FrameMaker components and styles to online components and styles.

The development process for generating the web schedule output involves generating a set of web templates that are used to map the FrameMaker source file components to the desired online output styles. Using WebWorks Publisher, a number of online web schedule formats can be produced, including:

A great deal of flexibility is possible in the template design process to incorporate the desired "look and feel" of an organization's existing website. Once the templates have been designed, the publishing process for producing the web schedules involves only a few simple steps, as shown below:

After the schedules are published, they can be moved to a staging area, then uploaded to the Transit Agency website. Changes to the design are typically achieved simply by modifying a few templates and style sheets, then `re-running' the schedules from within WebWorks Publisher.

Further automation can be accomplished utilizing the WebWorks AutoMap product such that web schedule updates can be scheduled periodically without manual intervention.

Contact Beige Technologies for more information on the WebWorks products and how they can be best utilized to achieve your online publishing requirements.

Handling Schedule Revisions

Once the templates have been developed and tested, the steps required to produce a revised set of transit schedules involves performing the same few steps described above.

Any new schedule data is loaded into the publishing database along with any updated publishing information through the TransitWriter GUI. The output is then generated by running the TransitWriter PSet file to produce the documents. If you are employing the web publishing component, the next step is to generate the output for the web via WebWorks Publisher.

Formatting changes — such as to create a new "look & feel," change output page sizes, or to revise the formatting or layout of the schedules — are accomplished by modifying one or more of the templates used in the publishing process, depending upon the modifications required: