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En Route Spokane is an online trip planner, helping you find the quickest way to your destination by bus. You may know how to get around with just the schedules, but En Route is designed to be exceptionally convenient, finding shortcuts and optimal routes that you may not have thought of.
Give it a try, and be sure your friends know about it. En Route Spokane tracks pedestrian and transit options for the county of Spokane, Washington, USA.
Entering locations
You can give your starting point and your destination in a few different ways:
| By address: | Put the address number first, then the street direction, name, and type. Don't put the direction before the number. (Instead of "W. 701 Riverside Ave.", use "701 W. Riverside Ave.") Try leaving out the street direction and type if you're having problems with an address. "701 Riverside" is just as good as "701 W. Riverside Ave.," and if there's more than one match, we'll ask which one you meant. You can also include the city at the end, but you don't have to. (If there's more than one matching address in different cities, we'll ask you which one you meant.) | Examples:
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| By intersection: | Only know the intersection? Put the first street, the word "and," and the second street. As above, you can choose to include the street directions and types, and the city, but you don't have to. | Examples:
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| By landmark: | You can enter names of certain places, like "The Plaza," a Spokane Transit Park & Ride facility, a school, or a café. Click on "Select Landmark" to browse a list of hundreds of points of interest in Spokane County. We can't cover every single business or establishment in Spokane, but once you know that we have a certain landmark listed, you can just enter its name in the future. | Examples:
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| By bus stop number: | You might know the number of a particular bus stop from this web site, or by calling the STA information line (509-328-RIDE). If you want to get to or from that stop, just enter it as "Stop XXXX." (If the service conditions for the particular time of your trip merit, you might actually be advised to walk to a different stop and catch a different bus. It depends on how long you'd have to wait for a bus at the stop you enter.) | Examples:
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| By geographic (GPS) coordinates: | If you have geographic coordinates, enter the decimal degrees of latitude and longitude. | Examples:
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Remember, En Route Spokane only covers Spokane County, Washington, U.S.A. Our system won't match places in other cities.
How it works
Trips are chosen mostly by how long they take. The trip with the earliest arrival time (or latest departure time, for an "arrive by" search) is shown.
An exception to this rule is walking: En Route knows you would probably be more comfortable riding the bus than walking. Sometimes the fastest route is on foot, rather than waiting for the bus. In order to keep you from walking too much, En Route counts walking as worse than riding the bus by a factor of 3.
For example, consider two ways to complete a leg of a trip: in one case you wait 11 minutes for a bus, and then ride it for 4 minutes. In the other case, you walk there instead. If you can walk in under 5 minutes (the waiting + riding time divided by 3), En Route will decide that it's worth it to walk. Otherwise, it chooses the bus option.
Walking/time trade-off
A trip with a trade-off for less walking. The disadvantage is that it takes 30 minutes longer than the quickest path.
A trip with a trade-off for speed. The disadvantage is that you are required to walk an extra 1.4 miles.
If you really do want to get there as quickly as possible, and don't mind walking more, check the "Fastest" option under "Walking/time trade-off preference." This directs En Route to choose walking whenever it will save you time over waiting for a bus. (In terms of the previous section, the penalty factor is changed from 3 to 1.05.)
If the weather is terrible and you'd rather not muck around in the snow, for instance, choose the "Least walking" option. This sets the penalty factor to 10, to give a great preference to riding the bus instead of walking. These trips could—but won't always—take as much as 10 times as long to complete as the quickest trips, though.
After you have searched for a trip, En Route gives you a preview of how much time you would have to spend on each alternative trip option, as well as the total walking distance for that option.
(It can take a while to calculate these numbers, so En Route crunches the alternative trips in the background and updates each option as soon as it knows an answer.)
Sometimes there is no faster trip, or there is no trip that involves less walking. In the above illustration, the fastest trip saves you 17 minutes, but makes you walk about ¾mi more. The trip with the least amount of walking is the same as the current trip.
Linking
If you'd like to bookmark your trip or share the results with somebody else, you don't need to do anything special. Just bookmark the page or copy the web address (URL); it will always take you back to the same result.
Normally, the same trip is shown when you bookmark or share the web address of a trip page—even the departure/arrival time stays the same. If you'd like to keep the depature time at "Now," so that it always shows the best trip that departs at the time you load the bookmark, use the "Trip at current time" link: right-click on it and choose "Copy Link Location" (or similar). (The "Trip at current time" link isn't shown on "Arriving by" searches, because it doesn't make sense to search for a trip that arrives by the current time.)