First things first: Portland Streetcar didn’t ask me to do it. It’s not an official port. It’s not even fully functional. I don’t know if they know about it or not, but I’m leaning towards they might now.
Anyway, yesterday (Friday, 18 December) was a slow day for me. I ran out of anime to marathon, so I decided to do something productive for a change. If you’ve followed along with this blog for a while, you probably know three things about me: I’m a web developer, I like public transit, and I like to solve problems. Put the three of them and about three hours of work together, and you get this:
Yes, it’s the same layout this blog uses. Customizr is a pretty solid theme that’s quick and easy to work with. Again, my goal was to make a proof-of-concept, so it’s definitely possible there are better alternatives. I’d be fine with that. The current Portland Streetcar site is not responsive, which makes it a bit of a pain to use on mobile. Until I finally bookmarked the NextBus map, I would frequently be fumbling around with the site on my phone to pull it up. NextBus is what Streetcar uses to calculate estimated arrival times. If you go online, you can also get a map of all of the vehicle locations. I think the signs at Streetcar stops are good, but I know the live map is far more accurate, even with its 90-second delay.
When I had a moderately working version of the port, I decided to start a thread on /r/Portland. While the thread has been pretty quiet, the site appears to be getting visited quite a bit. Far more than I was expecting to be honest (Thanks, /r/Portland!).
I do hope those playing around with it realize it’s unofficial and not at all a full port of the current Streetcar site. If you’d like to take it for a spin, please feel free to do so. I haven’t decided if I’ll finish it yet, as I assume Portland Streetcar already has plans for a responsive site. Either way, it made for a fun (and much more productive) couple of hours yesterday.
If you’re reading this from Portland Streetcar and want me to take the site down, please let me know.
