Not Your Father’s CTA Homepage!
(Photo: A new CTA homepage for a hopeful Chicago transit future.)
Kudos to the Chicago Transit Authority for the smartly redesigned new CTA homepage that debuted today. No, the rest of the site hasn’t been updated yet. But including the RTA Trip Planner, alone, makes this new page miles better than the clunky, hopelessly left-justified old one. I waited five years for this, folks, so pardon me if I make this short. I want to go explore all the new Web 2.0 transit goodness.
(Gee, Ron Huberman, you sure kept this a secret when the CTA Tattler folks and I met with you last Saturday!)
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Other posts you might like from Chicago Carless:
'The cattle car is being reintroduced on CTA trains...' That's how the Chicago Tribune's Jon Hilkevitch described the CTA's new plan to run seatless 'L' cars on some rush hour trains in Thursday's paper. I wholeheartedly agree.
According to the recently released National Transportation Safety Board report on last year's rush-hour Blue Line derailment that injured more than 150 innocent transit riders, under Frank Kruesi's leadership the CTA falsified most Blue Line track inspections--or simply didn't bother to do them.
Today, the Chicago Sun-Times Letters page published my response to the CTA's use of a grade-school contest to determine an appropriate name for the impending new route for the Cermak Branch of the Blue Line--a folly that countermanded the educated judgment of the CTA's own, well-paid planners and cartographers.
While the new homepage is certainly an improvement over the previous iteration, I wouldn’t exactly give it a gold star.
There are several things I like about the new homepage. The links and Trip Planner along the right side of the page work well. They’ve also tucked the navigation links under drop downs to reduce the number of links on the homepage. I’m partial to drop downs, but at least they’re resulting in less clutter.
However, the huge problem with this design is the center portion. It’s a mess of links and images organized in an illogical manner all competing for attention. Design is supposed to create order out of chaos and that clearly failed here.
What the CTA continues to need is a complete overhaul of their entire Web site (not just the homepage) by a responsible design agency that truly understands the web.
Hmm, a web consultant that understand the Internet needs of a transit agency? Never heard of one. Oh wait.
Mike, I wish I had your optimism. I sure hope this is just the beginning. But I’m less than optimistic about that.
And I agree with the other Kevin about the chaos of links in the center.
Time will tell. And I really do hope you’re right.
Also, at our meeting with Huberman, Ron didn’t mention it, but Adam Case did.
Yeah, I remember it being brought up too.
I’m finding the transition website easier to navigate than the old one, but it’s a little weird-looking. IMO, anyway.
I don’t see the improvement. It’s amateurish and unfocused. I’m all for function, but form definitely has a role to play.