Collaborating Early and Often in Raleigh-Durham, NC
In the past, GoTriangle found it difficult to share early plans. Inputting Google Maps data into several tabs in Excel, it used to take 8 hours or more. With Remix, the same amount of work takes 1 hour, creating a more collaborative dynamic with community stakeholders.
By the numbers:
- After moving to Remix, time needed to plan route scenarios dropped from 1 day to 1 hour
- Wake County Transit Planning Advisory Committee members got up to speed on GoTriangle’s transit network in minutes, instead of over the course of multiple meetings
- 8 local agencies collaborated on the Wake County Transit Plan, including GoTriangle, Wake County, the City of Raleigh, and the Town of Cary
The Difficulty of Planning in a Vacuum
Erik Landfried, Planning Supervisor at GoTriangle in Durham, NC, has a hard job. He spends much of his time deep in long-range plans, thinking about the nebulous future of 30 years out. “If you stop and think about it, long-range planning is sort of a strange thing to do,” Landfried explains. “Thinking what the world will look like 30 years in the future? It’s pretty difficult.”
Although he has always prided himself on a strong sense of vision for the future of the Wake County community, Landfried admits it’s difficult honing ideas in a vacuum. For years, Landfried had a hard time sharing ideas early in the ideation phase. With Remix, now he collaborates early and often.
“Google Maps Just Isn’t That Smart”
In the past, GoTriangle’s route plans spilled out from several unwieldy spreadsheet tabs, making them nearly impossible to share before the routes were final. Landfried planned his routes by creating a cocktail of Google Maps distance estimates, AVL data, and cost calculations, then imported them into spreadsheets with route frequency and speed assumptions. “I could easily see the route’s length, but I’d have to go digging somewhere else to add in the speed and frequency of the route,” Landfried remembers.
Frustrated, he knew there had to be a better solution. “Google Maps just isn’t that smart,” he explains. “The line doesn’t know anything more than that it’s a line.”
Scenario Planning Becomes 8 Times Faster
Remix has streamlined this process, cutting the time significantly. “Looking into a scenario used to be a very time-consuming thing to do,” Landfried says. “I can think of instances where all the mapping, calculating, and flipping between different reports could take all day.”
“Now it takes maybe an hour.”
With Remix, the GoTriangle planning team can also see all the relevant information in one simple view. “Sure, it makes it much faster, but being able to do that all in one place — that’s a huge benefit,” Landfried explains. His unified view in Remix allows him to plan his routes holistically, and as a result, share his routes with others earlier than ever.
Collaborating During the Wake County Transit Plan
At one Transit Planning Advisory Committee meeting, GoTriangle put their new firepower to the test. They were presenting on part of the Wake County Transit Plan, a long-range plan to better connect the tapestry of communities in the Raleigh-Durham metro area. Although the committee hasn’t voted on the final proposal yet, a lot of behind-the-scenes planning has explored how it could roll out during the first few years of implementation.
The GoTriangle team used Remix to get the advisory committee up to speed on the ins and outs of their network. “A lot of people in the room didn’t know what our network was,” he remembers. The routes were absorbed into the committee’s collective knowledge almost immediately — something they probably wouldn’t have fully grasped otherwise. “In Remix, it was very easy to show them around. When we were done talking about Route 100, we could look at Route 300, and everyone could quickly see where things go.”
The immediate context Remix provided at the meeting created a collaborative meeting, where the GoTriangle team knew everyone in the room was on the same page.
Wider Sharing in the Future
As the GoTriangle team looks further into the future, Landfried hopes to use Remix for even more ambitious collaborative endeavors. Presenting with Remix visualizations during public outreach meetings, for example, is on top of GoTriangle’s list of tactics to get actionable input from the community early in the planning phase.
With a referendum on the November 8 ballot that would help fund the Wake County Transit Plan, Landfried understands what’s at stake when it comes to collaborating with others. “The essential question is, as the city changes, how do we ensure transit will change with it?” he says. With Remix, he’s getting closer to doing just that.
