Introducing Transit 509

After spending the last several months debating whether I wanted to continue running this blog, I’ve decided to instead relaunch “TransitZac” and reintroduce it as “Transit 509.”

Some of my more sharp eyed viewers may have noticed that I started tweaking things on the blog over the course of this weekend. Up top is a brand new header with the new Transit 509 name, which still features the ever-popular animated destination sign. On the sidebar, you’ll notice some new links and new features. The biggest change however is that the site is no longer using a WordPress subdomain address. Instead, Transit 509 will now always be found at transit509.com. (Note that all old transitzac.wordpress.com links will automatically redirect to the new domain.)

As you might have guessed, Transit 509 will start covering a few new transit agencies. In the past, posts have covered news/updates from Ben Franklin Transit, Spokane Transit Authority, and Yakima Transit only, with a couple cameo’s from Valley Transit as well. Now, there will also be posts covering news/updates from all the other transit agencies in Eastern Washington. The full list can be seen on the right under “Transit Agencies.” However, this also means that I will be discontinuing my coverage of transit from the Tampa Bay area. Recognizing that the Tampa Bay area was one of my most popular topics, I’ll be continuing to blog about it in the future as an occasional guest contributor on another blog. (More on that in the near future.)

With a new name, I’ll also be introducing a couple new blog series. Later today, I’ll be posting the first installment of the News Roundup series. Instead of having an entire blog post for each little story that comes out from a transit agency, the news roundup will feature multiple blurbs covering news/updates from multiple agencies. New posts in the News Roundup series will always be on Mondays, generally on a biweekly basis with new posts on the 1st and 3rd Monday of every month (though there will not be a post on the 3rd Monday if there’s no news/updates to report on). Next Thursday, I’ll introduce the new Transit Throwback series, which will coincide with the popular “#throwbackthursday” and “#transitthursday” hashtags on Twitter. Some posts will feature an old newspaper article, an old system map, an old transit vehicle, or something similar. Again, this will be a biweekly series, with new posts being uploaded on the 2nd and 4th Thursday of every month. In between all that, I’ll still be continuing with my usual posts in the Epic Transit Journey and Transit Tourism series, as well as general posts about reroutes, proposals, and so on.

To help fulfill the new tag line for the blog, “The Eastern Washington Transit Resource,” I’ll also be working on adding bus schedules/phone numbers/etc for people who search for that information online and get led here. You’ll notice some new page links above the site header (where the About/Contact page sits alone right now), but it won’t change much about the blog overall.

With all that, I want to thank all my readers for your continued support, and I hope that you enjoy the newly relaunched Transit 509!

PS: Normally at the end of most of my blog posts, I welcome my readers to send me a tweet to @ziggzagzac with thoughts/comments. However, I’ve also updated my name there, and will now be tweeting under the handle @transit509.