New: Transit layer in Google Maps
The Google Transti trip planner is a great way for people to plan a single transit trip, but what about when you want to get the big picture of transit networks in a given area?
Two weeks ago, Google announced the the addition of a “transit layer” to Google Maps. For the full announcement see New ways to get around with the transit layer (Google LatLong).
Imagine some of the uses: you’re looking to buy a new house, and are most interested in houses near transit to reduce transportation costs and your carbon footprint. Just pull up a Google Maplet for real estate and turn on the transit layer to make your search easy. Or, you’re looking for a hotel to stay in on a business trip, and you’d like to find one within convenient distance of transit to avoid the cost of a car rental: just pull up a map of hotels on Google Maps, turn on the transit layer, and choose a convenient hotel.
Currently, the transit layer is available for about 59 cities. Many, but not all, of these cities participate in the Google Transit trip planner. Not all cities that participate in the Google Transit trip planner are included in the transit layer. I’ve inquired on how Trillium and agencies can ensure that the data we produce will be suitable for use in the Google Maps transit layer, and am awaiting more information.
Below, transit layer for Chicago.
How can transit ride America’s latest craze for change?
There are too many good stories on transportation, energy, climate change, the economy, how they are related, and how to intelligently connect them in new U.S. policies swirling around on the web to pretend to offer much of an inventory, but I thought I’d post a roundup of a few recent articles and editorials that have caught my eye:
Energy markets are hard to predict right now, and, as a sign of the irrationality, oil is undervalued — “Oil at $38 [a barrel] is free” (Is Obama’s Infrastructure Plan Built to Last? from Energy & Capital).
A long-term view on oil is that we’re at the peak of the supply curve, and it will become more expensive in the coming years. So, let’s prepare now — not with spending stimulus dollars on highways but with the right investments. The stimulus needs to be used not just to create jobs, but the right jobs; not just infrastructure, but the right infrastructure.
As the on-target Transportation for America advocacy effort points out, Americans came out strongly in support of transit ballot measures this last November. As a sign of the that support, Bullet Trains & Light Rail have been voted high on the top 10 list at change.gov.
And yet, much (three quarters) of the transportation spending proposed in the stimulus package is business as usual — highway construction. This may not be an especially smart investment right now. The plight of automakers presented some tough issues, but I can’t help but feel that we let the crisis go to waste and failed to implement more ambitious and needed plans to restructure transportation in our nation. See the New York Times Op-Ed on how we should be transitioning automakers to transport makers.
I see advocates mobilizing and talking around Transportation for America and streetsblog.net, both very impressive efforts. I can’t help but thinking that there is a lot more opportunity to form partnerships and work effectively to advocate for solutions. I often hear transit agencies talking about how frustrated they are with the unclear and emerging picture of how they will be funded in 2009, and, of course, of the ongoing struggle to get politicians to see transit as a valuable, dividend-paying public investment.
It’s my wish these transit agencies realize that there is a gathering movement online for better public transportation and pedestrian and bike infrastructure, and that transit agency involvement offers to make everyone’s advocacy efforts more powerful and better-designed. I believe Trillium is a small part of this sea change, but would like to be bigger part, and invite others to jump in as well. Read more
Big Noise: Accessibility via Gadgetry
Another example of how Google Transit can be extended to make transit information conveniently available to more people in more places. The Travel Assistive Device program in Florida uses Google Transit feed (GTFS) for schedule and stop information. From Big Noise:
I love gadgets, do-dads and things that go blinky-blinky. From Rube Goldberg machines that don’t accomplish a thing, to thing-a-ma-bobs that have an actual purpose; I love finding new devices and fiddle with ‘em.
I guess that is why I was so fascinated when I learned that the University of South Florida researchers developed a technology that uses cell phones to help people with brain injuries and other cognitive disabilities to use public transportation.
It’s called a Travel Assistive Device. It uses a Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) technology inside cell phones to keep track of where riders with disabilities are along their bus route. Then the bus approaches the rider’s stop, the cell phone will vibrate and a voice message reminds the rider to pull the cord to tell the bus driver to pull over at the next stop. Cool, ey? With one caveat.
More at http://mybignoise.blogspot.com/2009/01/accessibility-via-gadgetry.html Read more
iGov: How geeks are opening up government on the Web
Thanks for the alert from Joe Hughes on the transit developers email list.
The Atlantic Monthly just published a good article about open government and transit data sharing, including a well-deserved shout- out to Tim Moore’s efforts at BART (along with TransitCampBayArea and the iBART guys).
Joe
iGov: How geeks are opening up government on the Web by Douglas McGray
Barack Obama has said we need a “Google for government.” It’s a nice line, but what does it mean? Federal agencies have been online since the mid-’90s. Obama’s first crack at a Google-for-government law led to USAspending.gov, a budget tracker that looked like everything else the feds had put up on the Web—until I saw one geek-speak phrase on the home page, so small I almost missed it: API Documentation. To understand its significance, let me tell you how I got subway schedules on my iPhone.
Just a few days after Apple’s iPhone launched, a trip planner for the San Francisco Bay Area’s subway system, BART, appeared in the iTunes application store, which sells iPhone and iPod software for download. User reviews were mixed. But I was still floored. How could a local government agency move so quickly?
Turns out, it didn’t. In 2007, Google engineers asked public-transit agencies across the country to submit their arrival and departure data in a simple, standard, open format—a text file, basically, with a bunch of numbers separated by commas—so Google Maps could generate bus and subway directions. A handful of agencies, including BART, decided to go a step further and publish that raw data online. Once they did that, any programmer could grab the data and write a trip planner, for any platform.
“It’s not 1995,” BART’s Web-site manager, Timothy Moore, explained. “A single Web site is not the endgame anymore. People are planning trips on Google, they’re using their iPhones. Because we opened up our schedule, we are in those places.”
A couple weeks after that first BART application appeared, a new trip planner went live. This one, called iBART, was a thing of beauty. Free, too. It was written by two former high-school buddies—Ian Leighton, a sophomore at UC Berkeley, and David Hodge, a sophomore at the University of Southern California. Forty thousand people downloaded the program in just a few weeks.
“We’ve created competition among developers,” Moore said, “to see who can serve our customers best.”
BusinessWeek: “Ditching car OK with Net transit planners”
One of the main arguments I make for investing in internet-based strategies for transit marketing and schedule and route information (or, as its called in the transit world, “customer information), is that transit information on mobile devices and easy-to-use trip planners and maps can make transit radically easier to use. So much so, I believe, that they can substantially improve transit service from a rider’s perspective, all without having to put more buses on the road or trains on the track.
The title of the article Bryce Nesbitt sent me (Thanks, Bryce!) says it perfectly. “Ditching car OK with Net transit planners” — difficult-to-use or find information is a huge barrier to people interested in taking transit, and making the information easy-to-use can open an agency’s fareboxes to a lot of new riders.
Also, note this article appeared in BusinessWeek (well, it was actually an AP story). One of the positive aspects of Google Transit, from an agency perspective” is the “Google effect” — of associating your brand and public transportation with one of the world’s hip tech leaders.
Here’s a link to the full article, or an excerpt of the first few paragraphs below: Read more
