Google Conquers Mass Transit

Eureka!  What Google did for driving directions, it's starting to do for mass transit, i.e. showing you how to get from Point A to Point B by using public transportation. It lets you "create your own transit trip, complete with itineraries and maps." Right now, Google Transit is available only for 12 U.S. cities (among them Burbank, Seattle, Duluth, Austin, Tampa, and Pittsburgh), plus, surprisingly, the entire nation of Japan, including all Japanese rail networks, domestic airlines, and ferries.

To use Google Transit, all you do is plug in where you are and where you want to go, and whether you want to leave now or later. For example, if I were at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and wanted to get to the Andy Warhol Museum, I’d just plug that in, and Google will give me an itinerary with three upcoming departure times and a Google map plotting the route (as well as a cute little walking stick figure and a bus).  If you want to leave or arrive at a certain time, you can specify that too. Google Transit tells you how long it will take to walk to the bus stop (about 4 minutes), what number bus (500) to take and when it leaves (12:25 p.m.), how long the bus trip takes (36 minutes), and tells you how long it takes to walk from the bus stop to the museum (“about 25 secs,” says the Google wise guy). How to get home? Press “Reverse Directions.”  For more info, they give you a link to the transportation provider; in this case, the Port Authority of Allegheny County. Couldn’t be simpler.

I found this on Google Labs, which gives you an enticing peek at what those brainiacs are up to next.

Comments

[aioseh]

OMG. this is the BEST thing since google maps. i am SO jazzed!

[NLL]

Great idea

However, wo nihongo hanamamashite, scoche
I speak a little japanese, reading even more limted
Did not notice an English page option
This is a problem.
Especially since entries are made in romanji
and spelling of Japanese address in romanji is at best problematic

Also notice entires like
Shinjuku station to a city like Miyazaki resulted in an error

Will you be adding translation options

Arigato
NLL

[Travel Guy]

Does it work? This could be huge!