St Albert Transit

I have done my share of transit commuting across several different cities systems and today was finally able to add St. Albert Transit to that list. The buses themselves are not that much different from my usual ETS bus with the exception of the padding on the seats. It might not seem like much to someone who doesn’t use public transit but for those who sit more than half an hour at a time on their way to and from home trust me your posterior starts to feel it after awhile and I really wish ETS would take a page from St. Albert and add much needed cushioning to their buses.
I found the drivers to be friendly and knowledgeable. The two I talked to today not only knew their own routes well but also what ETS buses stopped at the same stops once in Edmonton to connect their customers to transit centers that St. Albert does not service. The weekend service here is also impressive as I am used to dial a bus service in other cities like Sherwood Park but they do infact run regular routes for most of Saturday in St. Albert.
The only reason I feel the need to deduct stars is because of the fact their online trip planning tools are absolutely atrocious. They rely on Google transit as opposed to having their own independent trip planner on their site like ETS and once I got over my frustrations I had to laugh due to the fact their instructions for changing the date and time when using google transit are wrong. When I finally did get it working it was still painful as there weren’t any listed instructions with stop numbers and addresses just lines on a map with different colors corresponding to what route it was asking you to take. If you wanted to zoom in and take a closer look the site was absolutely unforgiving and you had to make darn sure you clicked the EXACT right spot or it would not give you the info you were trying to get out of it.
I would love to see them expand their customer service hours as well as get their own on site trip planner then I could easily see this turning into a five star review. Even then I think they do a great job of providing transit to locals as well as those commuting in and out from the Edmonton area.