State Pilots Trip Planning Platform, Nebraska, 2023

The Nebraska Department of Transportation (NDOT) is piloting an online transit trip planner in the northeast and panhandle regions of the state. In this pilot, users can plan their trips by visiting trips.nebraskatransit.com on their computer or mobile device. When planning a trip, users can specify their preferences for fixed-route or demand-response transit, and whether or not they will bike for part of the trip. The platform is designed to assist users with planning both multimodal and multi-service itineraries. Currently, this platform only offers discovery and not booking functions; if customers want to request rides, the platform does share contact information for the appropriate transit agencies. Key partners in developing this platform include various consulting firms and the University of Nebraska.

In the future, NDOT plans for the trip planning platform to offer integrated online booking and payment options and to serve agencies and users across the entire state. The pilot helps NDOT determine how to improve the platform and how to deploy it more broadly in the future. NDOT hopes this new trip planning platform eases peoples’ interactions with transit services and that ridership on public transit increases. Rural transit agencies often lack the resources to offer their own trip-planning platforms; this effort from NDOT can hopefully encourage more people to use public transit across a diverse range of communities in Nebraska.

Last updated May 15, 2023