Slashdot Mirror
Google Transit Now In Beta
KIondike writes "Google's introduced Google Transit, a new Lab product where users (or, "people") can map trips around their city using public transit. From the Google Blog: 'With it, commuters will be able to easily access public transit schedules, routes, and plan trips using their local public transportation options. This first release covers only the Portland, Oregon metro area, but we are working to expand our coverage very soon.' The amount of data they give seems very comprehensive, including time you'll spend walking to the bus or subway, and the amount of money it would cost compared to driving."
Is there nothing Google can't do? If anyone working at Google sees this, I am offering free personal sexual favors. Just do Los Angeles next.
Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.
Seriously... there were a lot more interesting digg stories to rip off today than this one.
(heh, I crack myself up)
I'm not sure, however, if even Google has enough computing capacity to figure out NYC's public transit.
I like it that both their examples don't work :)
"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
I honestly don't think Google is capable of preventing the train from leaving the station two minutes earlier then the posted schedule. At $400/share, they can do a lot but that would be a mircle.
Now I can find the quickest way from Bald Peak to Beaverton, then into Rocky Butte.
Dude....you just said....
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Transport for London Journey Planner
Quite cool; allows you to plot a journey on several different types of public transport. Even includes the amount of time it takes to walk to the station, which makes it really really useful.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
Is this really a Google Labs product? From what I know of Google, Google Labs is focused on development of their primary product, Google search. It's the broader engineering organization that creates all the new stuff, like GMail, Google Groups, Google Maps, etc.. I know that's backwards from how most organizations work, but it seems that's just the way Google works.
Just try and do Philly, you can't write software that can make sense of that city.
It can't even tell me how to drive to Australia from Rhode Island.
Too bad I don't come From a cIty in oRegon State. They'llPrObably StarT on others soon.
It does have some new ideas, like price compared to driving, but otherwise it's not.
The Danish site Rejseplanen covers all public transportation in Denmark, from anywhere to anywhere, including address to address, along with estimated times for walking from Point A to Stop B.
As for people entering data into it? Well, that's also new compared to Rejseplanen, but why would you need it, when the site has access to every single itinerary in the country?
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
Portland's tri-met system already has an excellent trip planner. Google's transit applies that along their map as they do with driving directions. Can't wait to see this for other cities!
Tried this out today. The directions weren't too bad, although it didn't seem to be including the MAX trains in its calculations, at least not logically.
For the bus system in Ottawa, OCTranspo has provided an application for just such a purpose. You can enter starting and ending destinations, and it tells you how to get there, including walking times and wait times. It works quite well, and isn't something I expected to get for free. It's called the Travel Planner.
OCTranspo
A while back I was using Metro Transit's trip planner to get me from the rail stations that I commonly use to another location accessable only by bus.
Anyway, afterward, the trip planner asked if I wanted to take a survey. They were very blatantly interested in mobile devices and how people use them to utilize their trip planner. At the time I was using the first public iteration of the Sidekick II's OS and it rendered well and was fast to use. At the end of the survey it asked if I wanted to be contacted about a live group session to discuss the mobile use of their planner. I was never contacted...
Now I'm onto the Sidekick II's second OS (update that includes better rendering for CSS, etc) and is MUCH more usable on every site except Metro Transit's trip planner. I don't know if they changed something or what but I'd like to see it go back to a more usable and friendly state.
Onto my point about Google Maps. While this is great and all, Google Maps doesn't work well on MY mobile device because the GPRS connection is slow. What I want to see is ease of use and seamless mobile integration into transit planning. Who wouldn't? Most of us aren't connected via "broadband to the hand" or wifi jetpacks.
Let's get some useful stuff out there for technology that MOST people have available to them RIGHT NOW and take into consideration the speed of the bandwidth available for that technology!
Now other people will be able to take public transit more effectively, freeing up more room on the freeway for me and my Hummer!
So not only can google track my email, what I search for, but now they know where I planning on traveling too!
No, really.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
one thing that bothered me about google maps is that it doesn't have poi like yahoo maps. would be nice if google maps showed locations of subway stops like yahoo maps does under "Travel & Transportation" just to see what metro stops are close by a restaurant...
If google goes deep enough... they could track drives, routines, behaviors, etc. down to the day, the event, and every little thing to maybe predict if it's going to run late.
Evolution or ID?
Anyone else see nothing in the place of a map on Google Maps? I'm using Firefox, and all I get is a big blank image where the map should be...
--- witty signature
The transit companies could claim this service as profiting off of and infringing on their intellectual property (the maps or the actual routes). I smell an AFP style lawsuit in the works.
Not noteable, IMO a rubbish article.
This site http://www.efa-bw.de/nvbw/en_index.htm offers pretty much the same thing (just without the Google UI, but the maps can be downloaded as PDFs) since before 2002. An that one includes also local, regional and long distance trains.
I'd like to see them do Detroit. The instructions would start with "start at least 3 hours before you want to get anywhere." Then "walk up to 3 miles to the nearest bus station". Then "Wait up to an hour for a bus". Yeah our transit sucks.
NJ Transit has a similar system.. although it looks like it doesn't render 100% correctly on Firefox.
I found a interesting program that Metro here in Seattle offers that lets you track each busses exact location. If they could tie that in with google maps, and then tie the scheduling system over that, they would have a truely awesome web app.
Meanwhile, Google should get busy building a site that has has a collection of all the google map implementations in one place. I would love to see all the different googlemap overlays in one interface, although I realize what a grand undertaking that would be. Google are you listening?
Meet new people, and kill them.
After recently moving to Chicago I've become quite used to utilizing the CTA's trip planner, which also accounts for the maintenance work to tracks and bus schedule changes.
My major concern would be that if the CTA's database is private, Google will not be able to ascertain that, and with all mapping software there will be huge problems with the data being up to date. What's the benefit of this over what's already out there? Is there a major city that doesn't already have a trip planner set up on their own?
Seems to be reinventing the wheel.
Clearly a soft target, given the Oregon mindset.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
... but i'd rather wireless and internet support on the subway. i'd pay for it - but a free text-based ad system would work. and it's a captive audience.
un burrito me trampeó.
...is the sound of everyone at HopStop shitting their pants. Shame, because HopStop works really well, at least for NYC.
At what point does google know so much about us they know more than big brother? They are doing more and more and people are embracing them. At least Big Brother has enough politics to slow it down and enough oversight to not have to many bad things happen. You can't vote out Google.
There goes my karma. And I await my Google Overloards Code Red visit tonight.
Evolution or ID?
The US and public transit? That's like oil and sensible foreign policy.
Maybe I'm missing something here... but I tried the examples given in the article and it just seemed to be giving the standard driving directions. Nothing about trains or bus lines. I don't know Portland, so I guess it's possible that it was describing bus lines - but in that case, wouldn't it be helpful to actually give route numbers?
John: My word, you were here quickly, inspector.
Inspector: Yeah, I got the 8.55 Pullman Express from King's Cross and missed that bit around Hornchurch.
I live in a city that has fairly good public transportation, and it saves me a lot of money and frustration vs. the costs of driving, and the annoyance of other drivers. However, it can be a pain in the ass to plan out how I can get someplace with all the different bus transfers (and in a year or so, light rail as well). The city offers to do this for you by phone or e-mail, but sometimes you just don't have the TIME for a two or three day turnaround on your route plan.
If Google ever comes up with a good route planner for the transit system here, I will kneel before them and worship the Google folks as my pantheon of choice.
"Wow, you're like some kind of superhero able to ward off happiness and success at every turn."
-- Ryan Stiles
seriously where i live i already have sufficient information on how my public transit system works. is it not the same for other cities? not to mention..google seems to be trying to do everything, aren't they worried they gonna spread themselves too thin.
$action = empty(PHP) ? backToC() : unset(PHP) ; "when the concrete cases are understood, the abstractions are readily
Well, I guess the value is that google will have a collection of many transit systems from all the world* as most public transport agencies offer that (e.g. bernmobil for Bern).
Moreover, it's far from implmenting very useful things such as :
- real-time delay (e.g. STIB "synchro") :
- SMS (e.g. the '222' service for all local & national public transport in Switzerland)
* the world.google.com being USA, CA & UK, of course.
#include "coucou.h"
clearly this is designed for mobile users and with mobile access in mind...but how on earth did they pick portland as the first? come on...manhattan, boston - either would have garnered serious kudos...instead they've basically offered up a way to travel around and see the most diverse group of white people in america (second only to denver i suppose)...and what about crime data!!!! chicago is already doing this with a mashup: http://digbig.com/4fptf
enjoy life, and Gmail.pro
Montreal's transport service has also put up a site on how to get there which allows you to plan your route, the results specify walking distance, alternate routes, let you select what time of day, and to minimize walking distance or take into account that you have a train pass, etc.
I wonder how Google will improve? Perhaps by providing the same interface for all transit systems, it will be easier for tourists to plan routes, as they won't have to search for what transit system (i.e. outsiders wouldn't know what STCUM is but it is the name of the MTL transport system and the name of the site you must access) or learn a new interface, or even have to learn bus/subway route numbers to figure out which routes they need to look at schedules for.
Sounds good to me at any rate. The interface for the STCUM web site is not the greatest, so hopefully Google will give them something to aim for at least, and it could do the same for your city.
You make the gigantic assumption that the US has a comparable system. It does not. Pretty much anywhere in the states outside of Boston, New York, and DC have almost NO public transport options. And those scant few options are usually depressingly difficult to figure out, let alone plan around.
I think once Google makes this nation(US)-wide, we'll all realise how much we're dependent on cars and how lacking our PT system actually is. This can only be a good thing.
Now, if only trains weren't more expensive than planes...
if(!toilet_paper) roll.replace(new roll);
one thing that bothered me about google maps is that it doesn't have poi like yahoo maps. would be nice if google maps showed locations of subway stops like yahoo maps does under "Travel & Transportation" just to see what metro stops are close by a restaurant...
See:
http://brail.org/transit/nycgoogle.html
http://nysubway.info/
The first one even takes into account the route variations that run at different times of day. Neither is perfect, but they're not bad. They do not consider exact times/schedules, but sort of thing doesn't make too much sense the way NYC subways run.
A cellphone/PDA web interface, providing just the directions (maps are less important, really), is the killer app, I think. Especially if it included weekend service changes, so you could count on the instructions without sifting them through the usual mess of weekend alterations.
I think this is great. A big reason people don't use public transport in urban areas is that often it is just too much of hassle to figure out the schedule, especially when you're going somewhere new.
What they need to do next is to work with the municipalities* to integrate GPS tracking on all city buses so anyone, anywhere, can get real time info on when the next bus will arrive. No more waiting at the bustop in the rain!
*This probably won't happen, at least in cities like Boston, where the unions have a stranglehold on the public transport system. They are dead set against GPS tracking. They would no longer be able to cover up just how inefficient and horrible they really are. They last thing want is somebody to start compiling databases about their on-time percentages.
http://www.transportdirect.info/
Is fairly useful for the UK, most train and bus companies as well as road routeing and OS maps down to about 1:10,000. Unfortunatly still missing most domestic air routes south of the border
Now they should link Google Transit into their Google SMS service, so people can look up bus schedule information via SMS on their cell phones..
For those that don't know, send a text to 46645 (GOOGL) with the word help and it'll tell you how to use the system, or go to sms.google.com..
-Myke
I certainly hope this gets expanded to other cities, as it will almost definitely be a boon to public transportation if implemented correctly.
One of the biggest problems with public transportation nowindays is the general lack of consolidated information about bus/train schedules.
I particularly like the cost comparison to driving. That said, this makes it *really* easy to see how poorly the mass transit system works in certain areas. In one of the examples listed on the front page, a route that would normally take 34 minutes by driving takes 1 hour 16 minutes by public transit.
Nevertheless, this is an amazing service that I hope continues. I wouldn't be surprised at all if tihs received federal funding to continue.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Well, since I've never been to portland and don't know any locations, so far it's going to have to remain in the "interesting-but-irrelevant" category.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
...
Covers Ile De France, with how many time you have to walk between stations and all. You can even put bookmarks, and get the fastest route, the one with the less connections, or the one with less walking time if you're lazy. Pretty useful.
Plus their search exemples don't work.
I live here in Portland, Oregon. I just got directions from my house to school, and it gave WAY better directions than the current system we have. www.trimet.org
GOOGLE ROCKS!
If Benito Mussolini could make the trains run on time Larry Page and Sergey Brin can too!
Get your Unix fortune now!
Microsoft Live Transit.
This was all predicted in The Road Ahead.
It's like Nostradamus.
While I find this service fantastic, I bet not even Google can keep the public transit system running on time :) There goes the karma!
gasmonso http://religiousfreaks.com/As a Portland public transit rider, I took the opportunity to map out the route I take every morning and a few others I take on occasion. It's a pretty slick system, with icons showing your start position, where you catch your bus, the route itself, where you get off, and then your final destination. The route times were all accurate, but they got the fare wrong (all zone fare shown vs. the 1-zone fare required, a difference of only $0.30).
They also have an interesting estimate of how much it would cost you to drive vs. the transit fare ($1.50 fare vs. $0.84 driving, accoridng to Google), and a link to get the route in driving directions instead of the TriMet bus route. This will be an extremely handy thing for me as I take public transportation far more often than I drive. The integration with Google Maps and their driving directions has some real potential.
The only real problem I had using it was that it took me about four tries to get the start and end addresses recognized properly. Probably my fault, but I didn't think they'd need to know which state I was referring to when I entered in "101 sw main st, portland"
Keep up the good work, Google. I know I'll be using this feature far more often than TriMet's trip planner on their website.
For the 10 of you who still use the PalmOS, I would suggest metro. As an ugly american I used it to get around all over Western Europe & I never missed a train or bus.
Technology Consulting & Free Downloads
You can't copyright information. You can only copyright media presenting that information.
If google wants to look at the subway time-table and relay that information to someone else, NYC has no right to stop them. Merely taking the NYC subway maps and scaling them for distribution on an iPod does violate copyright.
I don't know about the US, but here in Europe most public transit agencies already uses systems like this (at least since 5-6 years back), and in most cases better (more details). Which is quite useful for me, I live in Sweden but have my job and a bunch of friends in Denmark - I can use both the Swedish transportation search and the Danish one to search for destinations / plan routes in both countries.
I grew up in Portland, and when I left, TriMet was still getting a halfway decent transit-planning system in place online. It only worked some of the time, and it gagged on my address because it couldn't figure out where the nearest bus stop is.
Fast forward to today. I can see pretty clearly that TriMet's database, which they were building when I moved away about four years ago, is comprehensive enough to map it onto the Google Maps router. I think that's pretty damn impressive.
About the only thing it needs now is hybrid trip functionality: Park-and-ride is pretty successful in Portland, and it'd be great if there were a way for it to tell me how much a trip would cost as a hybrid too. I have no idea if that's possible.
The one thing that would make this even more useful is if it were possible (Homeland Security concerns notwithstanding) to tap into TriMet's GPS data for the buses and trains on the system. Then, Google could actually give you statistical timetable information (this bus is early 65% of the time, this bus runs late 98% of the time [I'm looking at you, 38 and 39]), and could show you where the buses are currently on the route for upcoming trips.
"On that train all graphite and glitter, undersea by rail. Ninety minutes from New York to Paris..." -Donald Fagen, IGY
*This probably won't happen, at least in cities like Boston, where the unions have a stranglehold on the public transport system. They are dead set against GPS tracking. They would no longer be able to cover up just how inefficient and horrible they really are. They last thing want is somebody to start compiling databases about their on-time percentages.
There was a big scandal in Boston not too long ago about just that happening with (sometimes private contracted) snow plow drivers - they started putting GPS on the plows & let's just say there was a lot of sleeping on the job going on & contracted routes just plain not getting plowed.
According to a recent press release Google have released a beta of their latest invention: Google Sliced Bread. It's bread that you can buy already presliced. Google developers have figured out how to get the bread sliced even though it's still in the packaging. Google fanboys have been wetting themselves over this one. Admittedly it's only available for residents of Portland but Google Labs has promised a more general release is forthcoming. They even hint that a future version might have slices that are transverse to the length of the loaf. If they can manage that feat then their stock is sure to shoot through the roof.
I don't think that $.45 is the normal cost of driving, or at least what people would consider when making a decision. They need to link in with Google Garage and Google Find Me Cheap Gas to get that right.
If they could add in taxi information, it would really rock.
v4sw6PU$hw6ln6pr4F$ck 4/6$ma3+6u7LNS$w2m4l7U$i2e4+7en6a2X h
... is there anything from google that *isn't* in beta? I spent a good 10 minutes thinking of possible services that could be provided by Google and they're ALL there, ALL (minus two, one including the basic search engine itself) that are not in beta. See http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/
We have this in holland too. Bus, train, tram etc. with added info for some taxi services. This is by no means innovative. However, it must be said that it'll be more honest about travel times:
1. I would like to take a bus from A to B, then train to C
2. Leave at 08:00 AM or arrive before 09:00 AM
3. You must be feeling Lucky!
It'd be so easy:
Input starting location.
Input destination.
Step 1: Buy a car.
Guess who is trying to get a job there? :-)
Keeping my fingers crossed...
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I've been using MetrO since 2000 and it was the most amazing tool when I was backpacking Europe in 2001. If you have a palm device or a smart phone and you travel alot you should definitely check this software out!
Honestly - I haven't taken a bus or train (besides the metra commuter) in Chicago for decades because I've never been able to figure out the system and schedules... It was always easier for me to just either walk it or take a cab... Occasionally I drove...
With this however, I might, just might actually start taking some public transportation...
Go go google go!
Captchas suck... some, like the one I filled out here "smells"
We don't have mass transit you insensitve clod!
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
"There was a big scandal in Boston not too long ago about just that happening with (sometimes private contracted) snow plow drivers - they started putting GPS on the plows & let's just say there was a lot of sleeping on the job going on & contracted routes just plain not getting plowed."
Funny. About a year ago, the unions were protesting putting GPS on school buses. You should have seen the TV newscast. The union head was frothing at the mouth about 'Big Brother' and John Ashcroft, when all people wanted was a way to improve the on-time performance and allow parents know where the kids were. See:
http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/article
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
People who ride the bus can afford the internet? Well slap my back and call me shirley!
The DC Metro system has had a trip planner availabe for years now:
Metro Trip Planner
I always though that most major metro areas with well-developed public transit systems had something like this.
"What they need to do next is to work with the municipalities* to integrate GPS tracking on all city buses so anyone, anywhere, can get real time info on when the next bus will arrive. No more waiting at the bustop in the rain!"
They'd also need to work with all the private mass transit companies out there -- most bus lines in the NY area are not operated by the MTA. Who is going to bear the cost of such a system? A lot of the bus companies are nowhere near where they'd need to be to provide that information.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Ottawa ... Ontario ... Canada ...
has a transit planner.
http://www.octranspo.com/tps/jnot/startEN.oci
most cities do now.
but what I would like to See is something that combines
Travel Planners with Diffrent Cities, Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal, New York...etc
with a Travel Planner for
various Out of City Travel Methods
Grey Hound, Via Rail, Air Canada...
With Options like Optimize for Price or Speed.
so it would tell me something like
1. Take Ottawa's #2 to downtown (15min)
2. Take Grey hounds bus to Toronto (6hours)
3. Take Toronto's Subway to YorkMills Station...etc....
This problem has been solved already.
The worst part of a project that would do this is integrating the Price/Time DB from all the diffrent sources.
you need to make sure the source keeps there system upto date, and notifies you of changes.
hell if you put a little bit more effort in and a form for a credit card.
you could book the "Grey Hound"/"Via Rail"/"Air Canada" Ticket ahead of time.
and charge a $1 convenience Fee, for the booking
and google is just the person with the muscle to do this sort of thing.
either force all the Transit providers to the same Web based API, or force them to register what there API looks like, so you can write a translator.
sigh....I say 3 years away a best...
end rant
--meh--
What kind of car does Google think we're driving, an Asthmatic Hum-Vee? They use $0.405 per mile to calculate their cost of driving, at $2.20/gallon (about what gas costs here in Portland right now) that comes out to a whopping 5.4 mpg. Even my junker gets four times better mileage than that.
Schrödinger's Computer: You can't know if your data is corrupt until you read it.
Or so it seems sometimes. I hope they do DC soon, as it's a pain switching back and forth between google maps and wmata.com's site. It would be cool if they could work more public transportation and pedestrian info into Google Maps too, especially in major cities where driving a car is one of the least efficient ways to get around.
The Boston MBTA already has a site that does this here.
Since both mapquest and maps.google.com are incapable of providing decent driving maps of the Boston Metro area, this is the best site for trip planning. It will even give you two or more options with each trip, and takes into account things like the time of day and day of week, thus integrating with the actual bus schedules.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
"[my house in Hillsboro] to PDX" result:
Blah, blah, "arrive at Mt. Hood Ave. MAX station. End by walking (takes about 31 minutes)"
Thanks, but I'll take the train all the way to the airport rather than carry my luggage for 1/2 hour. I want my free back! This is a seriously cool feature and will definitely be a boon to folks like my wife who take public transit every day.
Yeah, I'd have to agree that www.tri-met.org is still better. I live in Portland, OR, and Tri-met has a much better system already.
1) Tri-met gives me the shortest way with respect to TIME. Google sends me transfering to different busses all over the place to have the shortest distance.
2) I can get directions from Tri-met by simply going Milwaukie Transit Center to Portland State University. Google wants addresses, which I have to find first. Google does not have a very good list of landmarks (atleast here in Portland).
3) The price Google gives is WRONG. The cost is based off the zones you go through. To go through all three zones, it costs $1.75, not $1.50. I don't even know where $1.50 comes from. It's $1.35 for 2 zones. $1.75 for all 3 zones. This is obviously still beta.
Just the other day, I actually got lost trying to use Google Maps while driving to my new internship (driving there on the first day sounded like a good plan), but because Google maps gives all these gov't road names like US 26-10. The signs obviously don't say things like this, it was terrible. I got better directions from a 76 (a gas station).
Google really need to add landmarks to everything. This would make it actually useful rather than a little toy that looks really useful from the computer screen.
Plan a trip using Mass Transit going from Fort Worth to Dallas and back.
I can plan a trip in Fort Worth and one in Dallas. I would like to see how it handles going back and forth using up to 3 mass transit systems (The T, Trinity Express, DART).
We have got to be the biggest metroplex with the suckiest mass transit system.
ChozSun
ChozSun.com
The ideal trip planner would take the endpoints and map either a driving route or a park-and-ride route. It would route me around current congestion and accidents and give me the choice of driving or taking public transit.
Texas DOT has a public database of road construction plans as well as a real-time network that tells motorists about accident locations and delays. What's lacking is the integration with trip planning.
Sometimes they fool you by walking upright.
It just seems to give driving directions. I tried a few routes and it doesn't seem to offer any Tri-Met data. Tri-Met's own planner at trimet.org is pretty awesome!
The Chicago Transit authority has had an online trip planner for quite some time that does this. Although I suppose having one common one that could get you from someplace in Chicago to someplace in New York would be pretty cool.
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
And "beta" is about as far as it'll get.
Truly brilliant. Since it's become an industry standard to never release software that actually works and refuse to want to support it, just always call it "beta". People will still snatch it up in droves but you can always deflect any responsibility for problems since it is "beta" after all.
Hell, some places CHARGE for "beta" software. Go figure.
Looks like I'd need life insurance from Google Insurance Beta just incase of a crash..
Good question. I've thought about this problem a bit (you need something to think about when you're waiting in a freezing cold bus shelter), and concluded that the costs would be minimal. The price of a city bus is around $100K, so the addition of a $200 GPS unit is peanuts. From there, the data just needs to transmitted (via CDMA or GSM cell link perhaps?) back to a central computer ($1K PC) and then sent to the Google servers via the Internet.
It's not a technological or cost problem. It's a political problem involving getting enough people to push for it and overcoming some narrowminded resistance from some vested interests.
see the most diverse group of white people in america (second only to denver i suppose)
Clearly you've never been to Provo.
The "Société de Transport de Montréal" (Montreal Public Transit) has had a public transit planner called "Tous Azimuts" (All directions) on their website since 1997. You can access the planner here.
The planner is a collaboration between STM and the Ecole Polytechnique's Intelligent Transport Research Group (in french, english version is incomplete).
Your commute can be planned different ways. You can choose your start and end points using a map, through a text search (street address or street corner) or with lists of important landmarks (tourist, hospitals, schools, government and everything in the middle). It will plan your commute either with your start time or specifying an arrival time. There are options to minimize walk time, exclude taking the train and what not.
All in all it's pretty complete and extremely useful.
I won't say i'm the best or portray that role, but i'm up to top two and my father's getting old.
If you analyze the output:
Cost: $1.80 (vs. $4.07 driving!) details
Hidden in there is a liberal agenda of using public transportation vs. driving. Look at how much you can save, folks! Very crafty, google, very crafty.
--
http://unk1911.blogspot.com/
Their site asks for public transportation agencies to contact them in order to participate, but why wait? Most agencies offer their schedules online in some format- if anyone can make a program to parse the various transit systems' websites out there and cull the data, it's Google. Here in Houston, METRO offers a trip planner, but the interface isn't nearly as nice as Google's.
Here is a great travel planner for public transportation in Brussels,, including walking distances. Sorry, but you must know Dutch, or French. There is no Klingon version yet.
I hear you on syntax problems. When I am asked for a city, I put in St. Paul. NEVER have I ran into a website that accepts it. It's always SAINT PAUL or ST PAUL. C'mon, just add. "St. Paul" for me, please?
I can't seem to get this to work. I've tried entering in their example, but it seems like its just giving me driving directions. It doesn't tell me anything like what buses to take, or what subways to take, etc. nothing. So am I just missing something??
Anyone else having this problem?
"It's not a technological or cost problem. It's a political problem involving getting enough people to push for it and overcoming some narrowminded resistance from some vested interests."
Except that you're talking about potential "Terror Targets (tm)." Security is a big issue, too.
And it's a little more complicated than that, since individual buses don't run the same route every day. You've got to have someone coordinating bus information, dealing with bus changes, dealing with route changes due to congestion or weather, etc.
It would require an additional employee, if not more than one, for each company providing the info. That'd break the budget for some of the bus companies out there. Not so bad for the MTA, since their operation is so big.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Look! Just type in the start and endpoint addresses and it'll plot your path!
Ok, I guess that's not funny. I guess there *are* buses. I worked with someone that knew a guy that has a sister who's ex-boyfriend took one. Once.
Can we add our own transit systems as a comparison to existing systems? For example, I want to create a system with elevated guideways on which 4-passenger vehicles travel at 25mph to offline stations spaced one-half mile apart. How much time would I save over waiting for the bus and the stops it makes?
(If this sounds like a cool transportation idea, see Personal Rapid Transit or PRT pages.)
Comment content.
if(!toilet_paper) roll.replace(new roll);
OK, the UI isn't super great, but the CTA/RTA has had this for years. See http://tripsweb.rtachicago.com/ I use it all the time.
Amen.
- I voted for Nintendo and against Bush
Microsoft has their own copycat service available online? You'd think with their large amount of data in Streets/Trips, they should be able to one-up this. Oh, and next time I go to Portland Oregon (never!), I'll be sure to use this. Why not publish the story when they do a real city like NYC, LA, etc. where it's not quite so simple. Take NYC for example: Shall we take PATH, MTA subway, bus, LIRR, or cab? And how about - "which is fastest" rather than "which is cheapest?" Crank your teraflops at that one, Google.
This sig donated to Pater. Long live
It didn't recognize addresses outside of the District proper
It would punt altogether if there was no bus or rail service within a mile of your starting point.
These two together broke the service for about half the area covered by Metrorail.
It has apparently improved on the first point, but still loses on the second. If you tell it you're starting from a suburban Metro station, it works pretty well getting you into and out of DC.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Actually, Portland's transit system already uses GPS to track each vehicle, keeping buses on schedule, and in the last couple of years has added an arrival time checker to its website and on electronic signs at key transit centers.
10Brett-T
Oh, bother.
The RTA Trip planner does an awesome job for Chicago. ---------------
Can I borrow your sig?
why just today I used it to tell me the schedule of a train that I wasn't going to catch because it both departed and arrived in a different country!
way to hit your core constituents yahoo! maybe next you can tell me the show times of History of violence in Bucharest! Sweet, I'm so not there.
One aspect of this service that I'm looking forward to is a single interface for transit info, no matter which system I'm using. Users only need to learn the Google interface, not the subtle nuances of different sites.
Transport for London has had an online journey planner for a couple of years now where you can enter your starting location, time and destination and get directions using bus, underground, and mainline rail.
Eh? I dont ride the bus much, but I did just pay for a 2 zone ride about a week ago and it was $1.50.
Joseph?
The big thing that will separate google transit from others is that it piggy backs on top of thier mapping system. Eventually it will allow google to produce a trip planner that includes driving, parking, and mass transit.
What I would like to see is some advanced query options, with things such as "I would rather walk for 30 minutes than wait for 20", more flexibility in defining how far you are willing to walk and whether you are on a bike. In addition to GPS location of busses it would be cool (and not cost effective) to report if the bike racks have spaces available. A guy that works on Seattle Metros Trip Planner said that some new stuff is being planned but depends on public funding (ouch) and that's (2 days ago) when I thought it would be fun to get all the schedule data and many other parameters and write my own and privatize it (Like I gathered is done in Chicago) but I imagine Google with do a good job with it--knock on silicon.
I just heard back from the head hunter. No go...
Phew... Have you ever walked arounb there?
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
The price Google gives is WRONG. The cost is based off the zones you go through. To go through all three zones, it costs $1.75, not $1.50. I don't even know where $1.50 comes from. It's $1.35 for 2 zones. $1.75 for all 3 zones. This is obviously still beta.
Google is correct; fares increased a while back. Two zones is now $1.50; all zones is $1.80. Check trimet.org. And fares are going to increase again on January first, thanks to high diesel prices.
I agree that the trimet trip planner works just as well, but google's information is accurate, as far as I can tell.
Well, currently my options for planning commutes on public transit involves this lovely website, which, like most every California public project, sucks goats. I'm not in favor of monopolies, but I am in favor of the better product winning, and in this case, some homeless guy drawing a map with a piece of chalk on the sidewalk while divining the timetable with rat entrails would be a better product.
By the way, did I mention that transit.511.org sucks? Just to be clear, in case the Google spider finds this page. It sucks big time.
Causation can cause correlation
No route, timing, or cost information appears when using Safari... I wonder why that is?
I tried out Google Transit and was like "that's not very useful... it's the same information as Google Maps gives you"
Using Firefox I can see what the BFD is.
...G-mail now (still) in Beta...
One of the drop-off points in the Portland area goes by the name of "Fisher's Landing", which is at "164th and highway 14". Google Transit doesn't recognize either.
Seastead this.
to do Mexico City!
We've had this kind of system for years in Oslo, it's called www.trafikanten.no (also available in english) and gives you the quickest route from door to door using buses, trams, trains and by foot. Maybe Google should have a look at licensing the technology ;-)
The interactive way to Go -- http://www.playgo.to/iwtg/en/
RIPTA (Rhode Island Public Transit Authority) has got to have the worst schedules and maps I've ever seen. But then, so does MBTA.
But this would absolutely rock. Being that I use public transit almost daily people always ask me what routes go where, etc. I'm a walking transit map.
It's odd that we've got a great intermodal system in the northeast but we don't use it worth a damn. Just look at RIPTA's web site for example and try and plan a trip, I dare you: http://www.ripta.com/
What I would like to see is a trip planner for serious bicycle commuting, that automaticaly avoids highways, high-traffic and unsafe roads, an option to take advantage of bike trails as much as possible, etc. Especially if it did it between cities for longer tours. While I enjoy researching the routes myself, sometimes I just want to get from A to B and don't have time to do extensive research.
Google Maps is cool too, but for those of us who still use dialup (yes we still exist, even where broadband is available), it's slower than molasses in Antarctica. Because of the slowness, Google Maps itself is painful. Frapper is painful. And Google Transit, because it uses Google Maps, is painful.
I live in outer SE Portland and would love broadband, but I'm already existing on ramen & macaroni, and none of the PersonalTelcoProject access points are anywhere close, so dialup beats nothin'.
The bay area sports a compex yet useful set of public transportation systems. The current easiest trip planner is that provided by 511: http://transit.511.org/tripplanner/
It would be sweet to see Google take in this information and provide the Bay Area with similar service.
http://pixelcort.com/
We've had a similar system for a while in Montreal (run by the STM) called Tous Azimuts (meaning "All Azimuths").
It doesn't use AJAX, nor does it have a satellite map built in, but it will tell you exactly how to get where you're going using public transit.
Cue The Sun...
Well, it's cool, it's googlemaps based, but it's not so new. Sydney already has a system like this, 131500 already runs this exact sort of feature set, except that the UI is a bit more clunky. Good on google for doing this sort of thing though :)
The release of Transit was brought up to the Portland LiveJournal community with mixed responses. I know personally that it totally munged my daily commute. Some say it's not showing theirs accurately while others say it's given some good suggestions.
... jury is still out. Guess I've brought nothing new to the table here.
So
If someone publically-minded wanted to get access to on-time percentages and such, it's not particularly difficult to ride the bus. Sure, you'd have to equip those bus monitors with hi-tech equipment like clipboards and digital watches, but it ain't rocket science. High school students are pretty cheap, too....
~Idarubicin
http://www.atm-mi.it/ATM/eng
The location finding is pretty bad: I can find Portland State University with Google Maps, but Google Transit has no idea what I'm talking about. Likewise "Clackamas Town Center", a shopping mall with a transit center that really ought to be included.
The bus lines up into Vancouver don't seem to be covered, even though they should be.
The big annoyance, though: while it shows a dollar-cost estimate of the difference between mass transit and driving, it doesn't include a TIME comparison. While it's great to know that this bus trip is $1.35, compared to $3.97 assuming the IRS-approved $0.405 per mile, it should also say 33 minutes compared to 9 minutes, so by taking the bus I'm spending 24 minutes of time.
Googling for the string "($3.97 - $1.35) / 24 minutes in dollars per hour" gives $6.55 dollars per hour. This would also be nice to have there; it might make more sense to work another hour each day, assuming you'd get paid for it, and your car is already a sunk cost.
-- Jeff Paulsen
Los Angeles has a pretty decent Metro Trip Planner. Even though it's run by the MTA (one agency), it covers all the other agencies of the area as well. It used to be very picky about addresses, but does a decent job since the update not too long ago.
...will be if you're planning to visit a city, and you don't want to take the time to find out what their transportation authority is called, where their website is, then figure out a new trip planning interface.
Vancouver, BC also has a good trip planner, but most people outside of Vancouver probably don't know that the transportation authority is called Translink (http://translink.bc.ca/).
Pretty soon, you'll be able to find an entire route, from the bus on your corner to the airport, across the continent by plane (which you will be able to book through Google Travel), then across another city by bus to your hotel (which you will be able to book through Google Reservations).
Although, if they keep expanding as they have been, you'll be taking the Google Bus to Google International Airport, flying Google Airlines to Google City, then hailing a Google Cab to the Google Inn.
Find environmentally and socially responsible products on http://buy-right.net
I happen to be developing an automated trip planning application for the transit agency for which I work. I have a pretty good idea of what I want our interface to be and what our public will actually be able to use, or at least I think I do. Google's interface, however, looks rather daunting; that is, the learning curve seems to be longer than a couple minutes. My experience with our transit customers tells me that they wouldn't bother because, on the surface, it doesn't look any easier than just reading the schedule. They would rather just call our office and ask.
The interface I am developing essentially asks for:
My idea for what to return is a printable, easy-to-read sheet detailing the trip. That way, if the passenger has further questions, needs to request a transfer, or needs to cross the street to get to a different stop, that information is clearly on the trip sheet. If the passenger needs to ask the driver for information or to radio another bus to facilitate a transfer, all the information the driver needs is there, too.
The main thing is simplicity of interface, which is the only way the online planner will be effective to the public at large. Right now, Google doesn't have that.
A friend of mine has had something similar for a while now for the Seattle area, called the Seattle Bus Monster. It also uses the Google Maps API, so it's interesting to compare the capabilities/interface of the two systems. Unfortunately, I don't think Bus Monster does actual route planning.
Actually, the Google price _IS_ wrong for some trips.
It erroneously puts my commute from North Portland to Beaverton as a 2-zone trip, because I start in Zone 2, and end in Zone 3. Technically, I'm crossing 3 zones, and need an "all zone" ticket.
I frequently plan journeys using our local system. This 'knows' service outages and diversions (sometimes which happen at short notice) and provides me with a useful plan. It works if the 1910 from Leeds broke down just down the road, and I'm asking which bus is the next one. It works if the 0917 to Doncaster is late, and will take it into account when finding me a connecting bus. It helps that the local transport is "managed" by the local Passenger Transport Executive, I assume there are others like that in the world.
I just don't think Google will be fast enough with transport companies to do this. In most cases it's not even as if the providers advertise service outages to third parties since it might just be one or two buses which are awry.
Smegma.
Looks like Google is duplicating the efforts of Métro which ALREADY covers over 300 cities all over the world using your PDA (Palm, PocketPC, MS Smartphone, Symbian, others), and i-Métro for WEB, WAP, iMode.
Not only is Métro more mature, it's completely portable/finished/polished product with a large and stable support base.
I've personally used it to great effect plotting subway routes in my vacations to Tokyo, Japan and NYC, New York.
I happen to live in Portland, Oregon, so I asked it to do a public-transit route where I knew the correct answer was: take the 20 bus to Sunset Transit Center and ride light-rail to the Quatama station.
It told me to walk three times as far as necessary to get on the 20 bus, but whatever. It then rode the 20 bus to the Sunset Transit Center, and rode the 62 bus to the Milliken light-rail stop, and then got on light-rail to Quatama. Um, what? You were AT a light-rail station, but you took a bus away from it to get to ANOTHER light-rail station?
Let's hope this is an EARLY beta of Google Transit. That's the kind of mistake that you just shouldn't be making in a beta product.
It's at www.511.org. However, if Google standardizes this, it will be much better than having to use 10 different planners for 10 different cities. This will also work well if they do citywide wifi networks, as they'll be able to install interactive bus stops.
-Palal
The Montreal (Canada) transit system (STM) has a similar tool called Tout Azimuts which I use all the time.
But, it seems to be broken today...c'est la vie...
In Montreal city we have this since 1997 !!!!
It's called "Tout Azimuts" and it is working really well.
http://www.stm.info/English/azimuts/a-index.htm
Montreal - Best city to live in!
Hey. It doesn't matter who else has already done this. Google is like Microsoft now. If they do something, then eventually that's all you'll ever use.
http://www.hopstop.com/ it has subway, bus, walking directions for ny, boston and washington dc
It doesn't work, at least outside the District, if you give it an address not within a mile of some transit system directly linking to Metro. For instance, my home address returns no results, but if I give the Trip Planner the city name, it then shows me the cross-streets of bus routes going to MetroBus or MetroRail stations.
Cool idea, lots of problems for Google to work on. I live in PDX, so I checked out going from my house to work. Note that these are just my initial impressions: some of them may be wrong, but if so I doubt I'm more confused than many other potential users.
Given what I'm paying for the service, I guess I can't complain. But I doubt I'll start using it until most of the above is addressed somehow.
The MetrO application (which is free-as-in-beer) will do this for hundreds of cities around the world.
I work for a company that builds trip planner websites. The effort involved to get raw transit data to appear on a website page in an understandable, step-by-step travel plan format can be considerable, and it depends on: who owns the data, who is responsible for maintaining it, how many sources of data need to be imported/formatted/merged and how often this data is updated.
Whether or not a city or region will be able to get transit travel plans from Google Transit will largely depend on who wants to spend the effort to do this data management, to get their transit data in a format that the Google Transit service can use.
Google already has the wherewithal to draw nice looking maps and they have an algorithm to create travel plans (for driving and walking), so the stretch to create travel plans using bus routes is not that great, and right there they've nailed down the 2 toughest aspects of building a trip planner website.
However, it's all about the transit data that Google needs in order for the transit travel plans to work, and not all transit companies have their bus route information encoded in the same way.
I've seen some transit agencies store their bus route data in Excel spreadsheet files. Others use sophisticated 3rd party scheduling software to produce their bus routes, and yet others store their data directly in a database. And all this information has to be formatted into some universal format that Google Transit can use.
I can see small to mid-sized cities which are serviced by 1, perhaps 2 transit agencies that would benefit the most with Google Transit, but for the larger metropolitian cities where you may have more transit agencies responsible for transit I think it would be much, much tougher, with that many more involved parties.
Having said that though, I would love to see Google Transit for New York, or the Bay Area though...
We've had this ability in Winnipeg for a couple of years now: http://www.winnipegtransit.com/main/index.jsp
If anyone were to do this on an intricate level, it would probably be Google. They're database capabilities are already in the extreme. Maybe they'll just take satelite photos and have someone map it out :)
Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.
I was in Portland for OSCon 2003. Portland is a beautiful, elegant, well-designed city. I walked or took public transit everywhere in the city and never missed my car. Indeed, the elegance of Portland is second only to the elegance--not to mention the low cost--of its transit system.
Unfortunately that means it's not a very representative challenge for Google Transit. It's an easy target. Let me know when Google Transit can get you around LA, or even SF.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Seattle Metro has a trip planner. Then there is Bus Monster which uses Google maps to show bus routes and current bus locations.
i don't mind using the GUI - google user interface ;) if they can link to accurate and consistant info from the stm over here. When i said spread themselves thin though i was commenting on them attempting to map ALL states and provinces Public transit systems, i have no doubt that regional systems already in place will probably be better than some of what google can provide - but i am interested to see the final product.
$action = empty(PHP) ? backToC() : unset(PHP) ; "when the concrete cases are understood, the abstractions are readily
http://www.beerhunter.ca/ottawa
What more noble cause is there for public transit?
Not really planning or anything fancy, but there is a working NYC subway map overlay for google maps at:
http://www.onnyturf.com/subwaymap.php
I live in Portland, so it's pretty cool to see this--couple of comments:
As far as immediate usability goes, the trip planner at http://trimet.org/ is better right now, since you can enter very terse search terms and names of landmarks instead of whole complete addresses for start and end points.
Example--try this in TriMet's page:
STARTING: washington square
GOING: pioneer square
No bothering with addresses, even though this is taking you from a mall way out in Beaverton to the core of downtown Portland. A link to google transit from a google map zoomed to a specific location will fix this issue mostly.
But, this definitely fits a huge need for transit users, because if you don't have a car, it's super annoying to have the only directions to the business/location you are looking for be driving directions. Or, to be looking at a bus route not a map, and vice versa.
Check out:
http://www.rideline.co.nz/ (New Zealand) and
http://www.131500.info/ (Australia)
The New Zealand one, in particular, is phenomenal. It allows you to specify a house address, and it will even allow you to zoom into the property boundaries!! It calculates how far you have to walk, which bus/train to catch, etc etc.
Google certainly aren't first. But if they can match the service provided in these two countries then they have a worthy product.
Isn't it amazing that the Australian version of the New Zealand product is but a mere shadow?
Denver's RTD already has a pretty decent trip planner on its website, though I find it to produce results much like computerized driving directions - they may be the fastest method, but I'd rather take two busses and have a one hour trip than take five busses and have a 45 minute trip.
Trimet (the transit authority in Portland) already offers this service. I first used it 5 years ago, but I do not know how long it has been around. It worked quite well, I may add. The busses also have GPS tracking, which, if I'm not mistaken, updates the displays at the major bus stops, including various park-and-ride, and MAX (light rail) terminals. Is this just rebranding? Is Google paying them for help getting this started?
Lack of public transportation is! Maps and routes for public transportation are not difficult to find. Now, if Google could just get me an English translation of the maps and schedules for the Japanese public transportation net, I would consider it an accomplishment. Lack of such information is one of the minor quibbles I have about living here.
I realise you may find this shocking, but some of us actually live in Japan ;) Most importantly though, I question your assertion that Yahoo is not catering to its core constituents.
I know our population of 127 million may seem paltry in comparison to the population of the USA, but keep in mind that we are a nation populated entirely of samurai and ninjas. As you know, ninjas are very stealthy; although they make up almost half the population they do not appear in our population figure as ninjas are virtually undetectable. As such Japan's population is likely equal to or greater than the USA's figure.
As you also know Japan is very futuristic. We have many gadgets in Akihabara and at Yamada Denki that you will not see for many many years - if ever! And they are all connected to the internet, even our rice machines! As you can see, we both outnumber the USA in population, and we are bigger internet users!
More seriously though, Yahoo Transit is fantastic, and I do use it or Norikae Annai almost every day. Given that Tokyo has over 400 stations and around 30 different train lines, finding the cheapest/fastest/simplest route was a pain before we had this sort of thing accessible from our mobile phones.
Kinda like Street Directory service in Singapore. http://www.streetdirectory.com.sg/
When shit hits the fan get some of these https://youtu.be/pY-GncsZ-UE
YUO DID IT
No live data. Most of these cities have fleet management systems. Some, my companies, generate live data on a polling cycle including predicted arrival and departure time. Essentially, the user could see if the bus is early or late giving a decent estimate as too when the bus is going to arrive.
Ehh...this is the life we chose.
Houston's offerings are even worse. Houston Metro does offer an online trip planner, but it consists of submitting a request and waiting 3 business days for a human-generated response.
http://jp.transinfo.qld.gov.au/ But good job Google. :)