Today the new Caltrain and SamTrans websites launched. The two services cover different journeys within the same transit district. Caltrain is the commuter rail line between San Francisco and San José. SamTrans runs bus service throughout San Mateo County, connecting with Caltrain and BART. Both are managed by a lean communications team at the San Mateo County Transit District.
FivePaths redesigned both websites and migrated them to Drupal.
What riders need first
Riders come to these sites to plan a trip: schedules, fares, stops and what is happening on the system right now. The new sites put that information at the center, organizing agency content alongside GTFS schedule data and realtime service information, including alerts and data feeds from Swiftly and SimplifyTransit.
Maps are part of that picture. The sites render routes and stops with MapLibre, using map styles authored in Maputnik and kept under version control, so the map's appearance can be maintained separately from the transit data shown on it.
Built for a small team
Both sites share reusable publishing structures, so the communications team can maintain two properties without maintaining two ways of working. The project included content migration from the legacy platform, staff training, mobile-first responsive design, multilingual support for SamTrans riders and accessibility throughout.
The team
Eric Leland led strategy and project management, Jason Salter the architecture, and Tyler Cifu-Shuster development and the GTFS and transit data integrations. We continue to support both sites as the district's service information changes.