PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — SEPTA is relaunching its website Thursday with a mobile-friendly design.
The updated site is 18 months in the making. SEPTA has been beta-testing it since August.
Lex Powers, SEPTA's director of service information design, said the transit agency knows 70% of its riders access the website from their cell phones. That’s why it redesigned the top of the home screen, based on feedback they received to add more necessary details for users.
“We've built a map where you can see all service information at once that you can get to from one click. Information about station arrivals, and then information about schedules,” Powers explained.
The new site will have mobile-friendly interactive maps with real-time information, showing riders how many blocks their buses are from their stops, and how many seats are available.
It also introduces the public to the SEPTA Metro, the transit agency's new name for the subway, El and trolleys. "Services will be organized in three categories: bus, regional rail and metro. So this is the first time that that term will appear on our website," Powers said.
So far, only the SEPTA website has been redesigned. The SEPTA mobile app gets its own facelift next year.