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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."
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. --
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.
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.
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.
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.
If by Google you mean Yahoo!, then no, there's nothing Google can't do.
(English guide to aforementioned service)
For more information, click here.
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!
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'
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.
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.
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.
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.