Thursday, December 8, 2005

Google Transit

Google releases Google Transit, a transit trip planner based on Google Maps. You can enter e.g. pdx to portland, oregon at 7pm and see directions as well as departures times and so on. Currently, the transit planner only covers the city of Portland, though of course Google promises expansion.

Why start with Portland? Avichal Garg in the official Google Blog explains:

“We chose to launch with the Portland metro area for a couple of reasons. Tri-Met, Portland’s transit authority, is a technological leader in public transportation. The team at Tri-Met is a group of tremendously passionate people dedicated to serving their community. And Tri-Met has a wealth of data readily available that they were eager to share with us for this project. This combination of great people and great data made Tri-Met the ideal partner.”

D.P. Neal in the forum comments on Google Transit, and he’s optimistic:

“I really like it. I know it’s just come out, but i can’t wait til it covers more areas. I was just looking last night at a site which lets you see where your buses are in Oxford, UK, and though how this could greatly improve public transport usage. This new Google tool will probably do it better.”

Google Transit by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (4)

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