(The following story by Sam Wood appeared on the Philadelphia Inquirer website on November 19, 2009.)
PHILADELPHIA — SEPTA today launched a newly designed Web site featuring a cleaner look and some new functions.
The site, at SEPTA.org, now allows commuters the choice of using its own trip planner or another that links to a version based on Google maps.
“It’s designed to be more user friendly,” said spokesman Andrew Busch. “We’ll continue to add new features to it through next week.”
Busch said that along with the latest information about transit delays, news releases, and other announcements, the site eventually will add more profiles of SEPTA employees.
Next week, it will add a feature allowing commuters to punch in a Regional Rail destination and receive the next four trains departing from their desired train station, Busch said.
“There’s an emphasis on real time information to people,” he said.
Busch said the site remains a work in progress. Some of the tabs, the career page for example, weren’t up and running today but will be by next week. Other tabs take visitors to pages with the old design.
“Our staff worked extremely hard to get this up and going,” Busch said. “We’re really happy with it, and think our customers will be too.”