Smart Trips tidbits

Last week I dropped by the Whatcom Council of Governments office to pick up my reward for logging 900 Smart Trips -- a tee shirt! Yes, I already have three Smart Trips tees, but I quite like them. The 900 trips reward was actually a pick-one-of-seven options, and my choice was the practical one.

While there I had a short chat with one of the Smart Trips folks about the trip logger on the website. As participants know, they had an issue this past summer that caused them to shut it down for about a month. When it returned, revamped and more secure, the programmers had made a change that confused some folks. On the old site, new members could log trips from before they joined, up to two months worth. When I joined back in 2008 I back-filled two months worth of bussing, biking, and walking trips that I could remember. On the revamped site, though, they count trips from the day you joined instead of with the day the Smart Trips launched back in 2006. This meant that anyone who backfilled trips suddenly saw their number of logged trips decrease. I lost about 40, I think.

But with perseverance I finally clawed my way back up, and have passed 900!

The other thing to note is that mileage reports will soon return. The person I spoke to said they have programmers working on a project since the first of the year to return that function to the site, plus some additional features. Can't wait to see it--then I can update my little logger on this blog.

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Update March 6
Looks like the software update project has arrived, probably March 1. Mileage reports are back, as is $ Saved. Calories burned may be new.

In the re-set of the start date my stats dropped by about 40 trips. Now my reported mileage has dropped by 1,200 miles between last May and today. Interesting...
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Later on March 6
Now the mileage looks correct again. Weird.