Connecting passengers with public transport in the Horizons region

A home for public transport

Public transport information had previously lived inside Horizons Regional Council's main website, competing for space and attention alongside regional council business that has nothing to do with catching a bus. For a passenger trying to find a timetable or check whether their route has been affected by a detour, that's the wrong experience. They need answers fast, not a council website to navigate through first.

Horizons needed a site built entirely around the day-to-day job of getting people on buses: planning a journey, finding a stop, checking a fare, and knowing straight away if something has changed. It also needed to handle live transit data properly, timetables, routes and alerts that stay accurate without content authors manually rebuilding pages every time a schedule changes, and it needed to be simple enough for a small team to run day to day.

Our approach

We started with discovery and design work to understand how people across the region actually use the Connect service, from desktop research and a content audit through to stakeholder workshops, and card sorting. That work shaped the information architecture and a visual design system built specifically for a transit audience: people who mostly want to get in, find their answer, and get out.

From there, our development team worked through a structured programme of sprints, building out the site's components and pages, integrating live transit data, and running functional testing against agreed acceptance criteria before taking the platform through UAT and into production. We coordinated go-live readiness and supported the council's penetration testing process ahead of launch, then handed over with CMS training so the team could start publishing content confidently from day one.

What we delivered

Journey Planner

Effect built a dedicated Journey Planner page and component, letting passengers map out a route interactively rather than working it out from a static timetable PDF.

Live GTFS data integration

Effect integrated GTFS data feeds directly into the platform, powering the Journey Planner, timetables and route information with live, accurate transit data rather than manually maintained content.

Timetables and route pages

Effect built a full set of route and timetable components, including a routes list, individual route pages, and timetable displays covering every Connect service across Palmerston North, Whanganui, Levin, Feilding, Ashhurst, Marton and Taihape.

Service alerts

Effect delivered a service alerts system, including a sitewide alerts list, route-level alert lists, and an on-page alert banner, so passengers can see detours, delays and cancellations wherever they're looking on the site.

Fares and fare information

Effect built a fare table component so passengers can check regional transit zones, ticket prices and fare capping details without needing to dig through a PDF or call the council.

A flexible content toolkit

Effect delivered a full library of reusable page templates and content blocks, including cards, features, calls to action, rich text, video, forms and embeds, giving the content team the flexibility to build and update pages without needing developer support for routine changes.

Results

Horizons Regional Council now has a dedicated public transport platform that gives passengers across the region one clear place to plan a journey, check a timetable, and see live service alerts, without wading through unrelated council content to find it. Live GTFS data keeps timetables, routes and journey planning accurate as schedules change, and a reusable component library means the content team can update and expand the site themselves. With CMS training, secure sign-on and go-live support in place, Horizons is set up to keep Connect running smoothly as the Connect network grows