Google Transit
As you might know, I love cities, and I love public transit. In fact, I was thinking about studying it, if it is possible to study. I remember telling my friend; You know how there are car magazines for people who are interested in cars? Who want to know about the latest developments, the newest models, the best roads - even if they can’t afford to buy the cars? Well, I want to read a bus magazine. With the latest development in the bus industry, the newest buses, the best public transit systems.
Toronto’s transit system, the TTC, is supposedly one of the better in North America, and it is true that an impressive percentage of the population uses it. However, it has a lot of shortcomings. I won’t talk now about some of the downtrodden bus centrals, the annoying ticket system, the design of tokens or any of that. But their webpage is also quite useless. Why does a transit system need a webpage? Well, wouldn’t it be nice to know how to get from A to B? In Oslo, Trafikanten provides a very good service; type in two addresses and it tells you how to get there, with different busses, how long it will take to walk, etc. Even Buffalo, NY, has such a service. But not Toronto.
Today Google launched it’s Google Transit service in Labs, still just a very early prototype of a service combining Google maps with transit information. Ie., it does roughly what I described Trafikanten as doing, above. Right now, it only works for Portland, OR., but they said they want transit agencies to contact them, if they are interested in being added (and presumably be asked to provide computer-legible route tables etc). TTC should get on to this pronto! I sent a feedback form to Google, and to the TTC, and also asked Spacing Wire and Now Magazine to get on TTC’s case. Hopefully we’ll see some result.
Go Google,
Stian
PS: See also my article about the bus monster.
