Comments on: Reviewing LADOT’s New Website

By: Kymberleigh Richards

Kymberleigh Richards — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 17:54:15 +0000

I don’t suppose anyone but me noticed that the transit services bureau part of LADOT’s website (for DASH and Commuter Express) went unchanged.

Good thing, too, because that is the most easily navigated site in the whole City of L.A. system.

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 14:53:00 +0000

Well, its is way better than the old one – the one that used to charge you $5.00 plus $0.75 a minute via a BBS system to get traffic counts, using a porn industry style 1-900 number. I hope whoever thought that was a good idea is now long retired. You can finally get some traffic counts online here http://www.ladot.lacity.org/tf_hist_auto_counts.htm BUT ITS STILL A FAR CRY from what the County’s site provides, just enter street names and the info is yours, see http://ladpw.org/tnl/trafficCounts/ Hope LADOT catches up someday.

By: Paul S.

Paul S. — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 04:13:06 +0000

Peter, I decided to take a look at the site based on your comments and to my surprise…it is actually not a bad site.

There must be a thousand links in there and you are whining about one broken link. C’mon, give me a break.

How about if you post the broken link and maybe they might fix it.

By: Peter

Peter — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:42:17 +0000

one thing we advocates should be doing is telling these municipal governments what software they should use to run their websites.

the first link i clicked on was broken, and i’m not surprised. it looks like a home-grown system. outrageous.

right now, every time some city/muni decides it’s time for a makeover, they go into some year-long process to pick a CMS and a provider and all this nonsense. forget that. we need to be able to provide them, at a minimum, with a set of guidelines on software they should run, on capabilities their sites should provide, etc. it’s not rocket science.

ideally there are providers out there already who specialize in this type of thing – folks like TOPP??

Palo Alto recently launched a website and got crushed for it, because it sucked, was expensive, etc. I say we start providing full SaaS implementations to munis all over the country, and we do it right, and we do it for much less money than they could otherwise do it. We’re the experts, after all, aren’t we? Let’s use 37Signals as a model for development, and we might even use WordPress or Drupal as a base for our service, and just deliver custom modules that will handle integration.

By: ubrayj02

ubrayj02 — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 17:06:07 +0000

I agree with you about the studies and reports, Damien.

I found all of those studies and reports (and more) by doing a bunch of intensive googling over the past two years.

It would be nice if the LADOT would show a breakdown of where it’s money comes from and how it gets appropriated among its various Offices and Divisions.

And where, exactly, are the crash and injury statistics?

The site is a hell of an improvement from its prior state – but considering the control this department exercises in L.A. (they have authority over most of the public land in the City), they ought to have a much better internet presence.