Metro Online Celebrating 10 Years
December 1994, the beginning

Developed as a World Wide Web site on the Internet, Riderlink went online in late December 1994, providing information about a broad range of transportation modes. It included bus schedules and route maps, information about forming vanpools, and tips for biking to work. It also included links to ferry schedules, real-time traffic congestion information and road construction updates provided by the Washington State Department of Transportation. Riderlink provided a two-way link between Metro and its customers with online customer feedback forms, online requests for trip planning assistance and online ridematch applications.

The purpose of the Riderlink Project was to demonstrate the effectiveness of providing electronic access to multimodal transportation information for the Seattle/Central Puget Sound Region. The project was a joint effort by King County Metro and the Overlake Transportation Management Association (TMA), an organization of eight major high-tech employers in a suburban office environment. The Riderlink Demonstration Project was funded by King County Metro, the Federal Highway Administration, and the Federal Transit Administration. Federal participation was administered by the Washington State Department of Transportation.

Riderlink was designed to help employers meet the requirements of Washington State's Commute Trip Reduction (CTR) law by providing easy-to-access information about a broad range of transportation options in order to encourage employees to try options other than commuting alone. The CTR law requires that employers meet specific reductions in the number of employees driving alone to work.

Use of the Internet provided an audience well beyond the Overlake TMA employer sites. Over the course of the eleven-month evaluation period, Riderlink was used an estimated 58,000 times. Daily usage increased throughout the study period, topping out at an average of 222 times each day. Only a small percentage of this use was from the Overlake TMA sites even though Riderlink was not extensively promoted elsewhere.

Riderlink demonstrated that up-to-date multimodal transportation information can be provided in an easy-to-use, interactive format using the World Wide Web. The real potential of this technology is through desktop access at work and at home, not through employer site kiosks. In order for it to be convenient, access needs to be integrated into the computer tools that people use in their daily lives.

Go live dates:

• Park & Ride Section added March 17, 1997
• Employer Transportation Section added November 1997
• What's new Section added December 1997
• Shelter Mural Section added May 12, 1999

Annual visits:

• 1995 - @ 58,000
• 1996 - 157,337
• 1997 - 478,162