Trip Planner Bakeoff: Part 2

Trip Planner Bakeoff, Part 2.

The Chief Morale Officer at the Friendly Neighborhood Center for Extreme Computing wants to go to a movie.

Go to a movie as in Get out of the house, chances are with another wheelchair user, eat movie theater popcorn.

The available chariot will be going to Lincoln Square in Redmond. Chief Morale Officer wants a routing with a good place for the chariot to drop her off and a short route to the Lincoln Square Cinemark Cinema.

The web yielded a street address. A phone call yielded a recommendation to use an elevator from the parking garage. RantWoman was not using all her brain cells and did not think about the available chariot probably being too tall for the parking garage. RantWoman rewrote the notes she took from the phone call in a slightly less raggedy version of scribble font and still did not think to call back and ask for directions to a street level door near the desired elevator. RantWoman will leave that to driver and passengers when the trip actually occurs.

But for grins, RantWoman asked not 1 but TWO trip planners for directions between the Friendly Neighborhood Center for Extreme Computing, wayfinding and other Innovations.

Google burped, hiccupped, coughed, spluttered and said "no routing available.

Metro, kingcounty.gov suggested the routing RantWoman expected based on the cinema's street address but did not have any verbal guidance for the .5 mile between the recommended bus stop and the theater. There is an awesome map. RantWoman can enlarge the map enough to know the routing makes sense but RantWoman knows lots of customers at the Friendly Neighborhood Center and other passengers who would really appreciate the walking directions from the bus stop to the destination.

RantWoman though wants to get even more carried away. RantWoman would be thrilled, thrilled if either the theater's website or whichever humans answer phones could reliably answer questions such as "how do I get there from the nearest bus stop?" or "I am pathologically allergic to parking garages. How do I get there from the sidewalk?

And yes, RantWoman would be REALLY excited if thinkingabout these issues were in the JOB DESCRIPTIONS of humans already being paid to staff movie theaters and transit designers.

RantWoman just wants EVERYTHING.