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Google Businesses The Internet

Google Transit Now In Beta 325

Posted by Zonk from the now-we-just-need-more-viable-public-transit dept.
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."
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Google Transit Now In Beta More

Google Transit Now In Beta

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  • Good lord (Score:4, Funny)

    by NotoriousGOD ( 936922 ) on Thursday December 08, 2005 @01:46PM (#14212372)
    Is there nothing Google can't do? If anyone working at Google sees this, I am offering free personal sexual favors. Just do Los Angeles next.

  • NYC Public Transit (Score:4, Funny)

    by Slashdoc Beta ( 925619 ) on Thursday December 08, 2005 @01:47PM (#14212386) Homepage
    I'm not sure, however, if even Google has enough computing capacity to figure out NYC's public transit [nyc.ny.us].
    • Didn't someone already get sued for offering up Subway Transit maps on the iPod?

      Just wait till people start accessing this over their cellphones.

      Is the (NY) transit authority going to go apeshit and threaten to sue?

      • Minor difference. (Score:3, Informative)

        by chaboud ( 231590 )
        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.
      • Let me guess, they claimed they had to shut it down for "security" reasons? It sounds like the kind of thing some paranoid official would say, nevermind that the information is already public.
  • I honestly don't think Google is capable of preventing the train from leaving the station two minutes earlier then the posted schedule. At $400/share, they can do a lot but that would be a mircle.
    • If google goes deep enough... they could track drives, routines, behaviors, etc. down to the day, the event, and every little thing to maybe predict if it's going to run late.
    • If Benito Mussolini could make the trains run on time Larry Page and Sergey Brin can too!

  • Thank heavens for Google Transit Portland (Score:5, Funny)

    by digitaldc ( 879047 ) * on Thursday December 08, 2005 @01:48PM (#14212393)
    Now I can find the quickest way from Bald Peak to Beaverton, then into Rocky Butte.

    Dude....you just said....

  • For those in or around London, England (Score:5, Informative)

    by jb.hl.com ( 782137 ) <joe@joe-ba l d win.net> on Thursday December 08, 2005 @01:48PM (#14212398) Homepage Journal
    Transport for London Journey Planner [tfl.gov.uk]

    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.
    • The Boston MBTA already has a site that does this here. [mbta.com]

      Since both mapquest and maps.google.com are incapable of providing decent driving maps of the Boston Metro area, this is the best site for trip planning. It will even give you two or more options with each trip, and takes into account things like the time of day and day of week, thus integrating with the actual bus schedules.

  • It's not exactly a new idea (Score:5, Informative)

    by Hektor_Troy ( 262592 ) on Thursday December 08, 2005 @01:50PM (#14212424)
    It does have some new ideas, like price compared to driving, but otherwise it's not.

    The Danish site Rejseplanen [rejseplanen.dk] 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?
    • You make the gigantic assumption that the US has a comparable system. It does not. Pretty much anywhere in the states outside of Boston, New York, and DC have almost NO public transport options. And those scant few options are usually depressingly difficult to figure out, let alone plan around.

      I think once Google makes this nation(US)-wide, we'll all realise how much we're dependent on cars and how lacking our PT system actually is. This can only be a good thing.

      Now, if only trains weren't more expensive th
    • Not to mention DeutscheBahn in Germany [www.bahn.de] or one of many in Japan [jorudan.co.jp](you can even get it on your cell phone there), and that is just the countries I have lived in. I'm a 25 year old USian and the one thing that I really like about Germany and Japan has been that both have very extensive public transport systems(though were I live in Germany is a bit lacking, the closes train station is 16ks away, but I also live in cow country)....

      Honestly, I think a lot of the problems with health stem from American's overrelia
    • Population of denmark: round 5 milion.

      Those are not cities boy, they are towns.

      Lets see if google ever gets to Mexico city. 35 million people leave there, we have 6 million cars just there, diferent companies providing public transport which cannot even be made to put adult drivers on their busses.

      Google.... meh. If they ever attempt mexico city, i promise, theyll go bankrupt.

      • The problem is less the size of the population than the complexity of the public transport system.
      • Sure ... but let's have a look at the complexity of the system in Denmark - one of the bigger areas in Denmark (around the capitol) has 270 bus-lines, 15 local train lines plus a bunch of reginol train lines that I don't really know the number of. And this is an area that covers maybe 1/6th of Denmark (but about 1/3rd of the population).

        Sure, you may have more people, but I'm pretty sure that the public transportation system in Denmark, with its measly 5 million people, is bigger and more complex than the o

    • Microsoft Live Transit.

      This was all predicted in The Road Ahead [microsoft.com].

      It's like Nostradamus.

    • In the UK, transportdirect.info [transportdirect.info] provides a door-to-door journey planner for free - giving you the option of Public Transport and/or driving - allowing you to compare trip times. It uses expected traffic levels when calculating driving times, and provides details of all rail, metro, light rail, the vast majority of bus and coach services, and some air and sea services.

      It'll show you on a map where your nearby bus stops are, and when you plan a journey will show you on a map which stops that you need to catc

  • Great work! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SendBot ( 29932 ) on Thursday December 08, 2005 @01:50PM (#14212425) Homepage Journal
    Portland's tri-met [tri-met.org] system already has an excellent trip planner. Google's transit applies that along their map as they do with driving directions. Can't wait to see this for other cities!

  • I live in Portland... (Score:4, Informative)

    by HexRei ( 515117 ) on Thursday December 08, 2005 @01:50PM (#14212427)
    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.

  • Ottawa, Canada has their own system (Score:4, Interesting)

    by thebes ( 663586 ) on Thursday December 08, 2005 @01:51PM (#14212432)
    For the bus system in Ottawa, OCTranspo has provided an application for just such a purpose. You can enter starting and ending destinations, and it tells you how to get there, including walking times and wait times. It works quite well, and isn't something I expected to get for free. It's called the Travel Planner.
    OCTranspo [octranspo.com]
    • Also worth noting is the 560 feature. There's a number at each stop. You dial 560-1000, type in the number of your bus stop, and it tells you how long until the next 3 busses come. This is great when it's cold outside, and you don't want to be waiting at the stop for 20 minutes waiting for the less frequent buses to come.
  • A while back I was using Metro Transit [metrotransit.org]'s trip planner [state.mn.us] to get me from the rail stations that I commonly use to another location accessable only by bus.

    Anyway, afterward, the trip planner asked if I wanted to take a survey. They were very blatantly interested in mobile devices and how people use them to utilize their trip planner. At the time I was using the first public iteration of the Sidekick II's OS and it rendered well and was fast to use. At the end of the survey it asked if I wanted to be contacted

  • Fantastic! (Score:5, Funny)

    by David M. Sweeney ( 105063 ) on Thursday December 08, 2005 @01:52PM (#14212442)
    Now other people will be able to take public transit more effectively, freeing up more room on the freeway [theonion.com] for me and my Hummer!
  • So not only can google track my email, what I search for, but now they know where I planning on traveling too!

  • Anyone else see nothing in the place of a map on Google Maps? I'm using Firefox, and all I get is a big blank image where the map should be...

  • I live in Detroit (Score:3, Funny)

    by aculeus ( 21460 ) on Thursday December 08, 2005 @01:54PM (#14212473)
    I'd like to see them do Detroit. The instructions would start with "start at least 3 hours before you want to get anywhere." Then "walk up to 3 miles to the nearest bus station". Then "Wait up to an hour for a bus". Yeah our transit sucks.
    • Try that in San Diego... walk 20 miles ... uphill ... in the sun ... we don't like clouds to the nearest del taco [we also don't believe in real restaurants]. Then get to walk 20 miles back ... uphill ... in the sun ... to your hotel. Only to then be starving because A FUCKING TACO DOESN'T GO FAR!

      At least where I'm from in Mississauga [Canada for you americans...] I walk 5 minutes to the nearest full featured mall with a proper sit down restaurant. :-)

      Tom
  • NJ Transit [njtransit.com] has a similar system.. although it looks like it doesn't render 100% correctly on Firefox.
    • The NJ Transit system, however, doesn't include any other mass transit providers. There are several bus companies that operate in NJ, sometimes they are better for where you want to go.

      Use the NJTransit system to check on routes from New Brunswick to Newark. No mention of the Suburban bus that is cheaper and faster than the train (well, faster outside of rush hour).

      When in college, I tried writing an app to combine mass transit schedules from NJTransit, Suburban, Coach, TRansbridge, etc., to come up w

  • Accuracy (Score:3, Informative)

    by Ahlee ( 160047 ) on Thursday December 08, 2005 @01:56PM (#14212492)
    After recently moving to Chicago I've become quite used to utilizing the CTA's trip planner [rtachicago.com], 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.
  • This first release covers only the Portland, Oregon metro area

    Clearly a soft target, given the Oregon mindset.

  • ... but i'd rather wireless and internet support on the subway. i'd pay for it - but a free text-based ad system would work. and it's a captive audience.

  • That Squishy Sound (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hirschma ( 187820 ) on Thursday December 08, 2005 @01:57PM (#14212502)
    ...is the sound of everyone at HopStop [hopstop.com] shitting their pants. Shame, because HopStop works really well, at least for NYC.

  • Big Brother (Score:2, Interesting)

    by millahtime ( 710421 )
    At what point does google know so much about us they know more than big brother? They are doing more and more and people are embracing them. At least Big Brother has enough politics to slow it down and enough oversight to not have to many bad things happen. You can't vote out Google.

    There goes my karma. And I await my Google Overloards Code Red visit tonight.
    • Well, you can't vote out Big Brother either. You can choose not to use Google services, but you can't choose your (ostensibly) elected government.

      Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.
  • I live in a city that has fairly good public transportation, and it saves me a lot of money and frustration vs. the costs of driving, and the annoyance of other drivers. However, it can be a pain in the ass to plan out how I can get someplace with all the different bus transfers (and in a year or so, light rail as well). The city offers to do this for you by phone or e-mail, but sometimes you just don't have the TIME for a two or three day turnaround on your route plan.

    If Google ever comes up with a good ro

  • Boring (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dago ( 25724 ) on Thursday December 08, 2005 @02:03PM (#14212557)
    Well, I guess the value is that google will have a collection of many transit systems from all the world* as most public transport agencies offer that (e.g. bernmobil [bernmobil.ch] for Bern).

    Moreover, it's far from implmenting very useful things such as :
    - real-time delay (e.g. STIB "synchro" [irisnet.be]) :
    - SMS (e.g. the '222 [mct.sbb.ch]' service for all local & national public transport in Switzerland)

    * the world.google.com being USA, CA & UK, of course.
    • "Moreover, it's far from implmenting very useful things such as : - real-time delay (e.g. STIB "synchro") :

      Hell, NJTransit can't even provide itself with real-time delay information, there's no way they can provide it to Google.

      I get "instant email alerts" when my trains are delayed -- but those emails are usually sent after my delayed train has already arrived at my destination.

  • Fantastic. Now just add GPS info (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Tim2005 ( 924108 ) on Thursday December 08, 2005 @02:06PM (#14212592)
    I think this is great. A big reason people don't use public transport in urban areas is that often it is just too much of hassle to figure out the schedule, especially when you're going somewhere new.

    What they need to do next is to work with the municipalities* to integrate GPS tracking on all city buses so anyone, anywhere, can get real time info on when the next bus will arrive. No more waiting at the bustop in the rain!

    *This probably won't happen, at least in cities like Boston, where the unions have a stranglehold on the public transport system. They are dead set against GPS tracking. They would no longer be able to cover up just how inefficient and horrible they really are. They last thing want is somebody to start compiling databases about their on-time percentages.

    • *This probably won't happen, at least in cities like Boston, where the unions have a stranglehold on the public transport system. They are dead set against GPS tracking. They would no longer be able to cover up just how inefficient and horrible they really are. They last thing want is somebody to start compiling databases about their on-time percentages.

      There was a big scandal in Boston not too long ago about just that happening with (sometimes private contracted) snow plow drivers - they started putting GP

      • "There was a big scandal in Boston not too long ago about just that happening with (sometimes private contracted) snow plow drivers - they started putting GPS on the plows & let's just say there was a lot of sleeping on the job going on & contracted routes just plain not getting plowed."

        Funny. About a year ago, the unions were protesting putting GPS on school buses. You should have seen the TV newscast. The union head was frothing at the mouth about 'Big Brother' and John Ashcroft, when all people

    • "What they need to do next is to work with the municipalities* to integrate GPS tracking on all city buses so anyone, anywhere, can get real time info on when the next bus will arrive. No more waiting at the bustop in the rain!"

      They'd also need to work with all the private mass transit companies out there -- most bus lines in the NY area are not operated by the MTA. Who is going to bear the cost of such a system? A lot of the bus companies are nowhere near where they'd need to be to provide that inform
  • I certainly hope this gets expanded to other cities, as it will almost definitely be a boon to public transportation if implemented correctly.

    One of the biggest problems with public transportation nowindays is the general lack of consolidated information about bus/train schedules.

    I particularly like the cost comparison to driving. That said, this makes it *really* easy to see how poorly the mass transit system works in certain areas. In one of the examples [google.com] listed on the front page, a route that would norm
    • That said, this makes it *really* easy to see how poorly the mass transit system works in certain areas.

      That assumes that your metric is time. However, if your metric is cost, the public transit will almost always be cheaper (based on IRS mileage rates). Furthermore, transit systems have a another metric, which is coverage. What good is a fast transit system if it only takes you between a limited number of locations? This is especially important if you don't own a car, as walking will almost always be the
  • Well, since I've never been to portland and don't know any locations, so far it's going to have to remain in the "interesting-but-irrelevant" category.
    • Portland was chosen probably because their transit system is famous for being on-time. When I lived there, most of the time you can set your clock by the buses. (Don't know if that's still true anymore)

  • While I find this service fantastic, I bet not even Google can keep the public transit system running on time :) There goes the karma!

    gasmonso http://religiousfreaks.com/ [religiousfreaks.com]

  • Old news? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Zedrick ( 764028 )
    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.
  • According to a recent press release Google have released a beta of their latest invention: Google Sliced Bread. It's bread that you can buy already presliced. Google developers have figured out how to get the bread sliced even though it's still in the packaging. Google fanboys have been wetting themselves over this one. Admittedly it's only available for residents of Portland but Google Labs has promised a more general release is forthcoming. They even hint that a future version might have slices that are t
  • I don't think that $.45 is the normal cost of driving, or at least what people would consider when making a decision. They need to link in with Google Garage and Google Find Me Cheap Gas to get that right.

    If they could add in taxi information, it would really rock.
  • It'd be so easy:

    Input starting location.
    Input destination.

    Step 1: Buy a car.

  • Welcome to 2000 (Score:2, Informative)

    by austinpoet ( 789122 )
    I've been using MetrO [nanika.net] 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!
  • They think locally. Case in point is that since about a year you can enter a Zurich Geneva [google.ch] on their Swiss [google.ch] site and the first link is the current timetable of the federal railways.

  • DC Metro Trip Planner (Score:4, Insightful)

    by calibanDNS ( 32250 ) <(brad_staton) (at) (hotmail.com)> on Thursday December 08, 2005 @02:27PM (#14212802)
    The DC Metro system has had a trip planner availabe for years now:
    Metro Trip Planner [wmata.com]

    I always though that most major metro areas with well-developed public transit systems had something like this.
    • The last time I actually tried the DC Metro Trip Planner (about a year ago), it was useless:

      It didn't recognize addresses outside of the District proper

      It would punt altogether if there was no bus or rail service within a mile of your starting point.

      These two together broke the service for about half the area covered by Metrorail.

      It has apparently improved on the first point, but still loses on the second. If you tell it you're starting from a suburban Metro station, it works pretty well getting you into a

  • Ottawa ... Ontario ... Canada ...
    has a transit planner.

    http://www.octranspo.com/tps/jnot/startEN.oci [octranspo.com]

    most cities do now.

    but what I would like to See is something that combines
    Travel Planners with Diffrent Cities, Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal, New York...etc

    with a Travel Planner for
    various Out of City Travel Methods
    Grey Hound, Via Rail, Air Canada...

    With Options like Optimize for Price or Speed.

    so it would tell me something like
    1. Take Ottawa's #2 to downtown (15min)
    2. Take Grey hounds bus to Toronto (6hours)
    3.

  • CTA has had this for a while... (Score:3, Informative)

    by mengel ( 13619 ) <mengel@users.so[ ... t ['urc' in gap]> on Thursday December 08, 2005 @02:37PM (#14212940) Homepage Journal
    The Chicago Transit authority has had an online trip planner [transitchicago.com] 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.
  • And "beta" is about as far as it'll get.

    Truly brilliant. Since it's become an industry standard to never release software that actually works and refuse to want to support it, just always call it "beta". People will still snatch it up in droves but you can always deflect any responsibility for problems since it is "beta" after all.

    Hell, some places CHARGE for "beta" software. Go figure.
  • Their site asks for public transportation agencies to contact them in order to participate, but why wait? Most agencies offer their schedules online in some format- if anyone can make a program to parse the various transit systems' websites out there and cull the data, it's Google. Here in Houston, METRO offers a trip planner [ridemetro.org], but the interface isn't nearly as nice as Google's.
  • Microsoft has their own copycat service available online? You'd think with their large amount of data in Streets/Trips, they should be able to one-up this. Oh, and next time I go to Portland Oregon (never!), I'll be sure to use this. Why not publish the story when they do a real city like NYC, LA, etc. where it's not quite so simple. Take NYC for example: Shall we take PATH, MTA subway, bus, LIRR, or cab? And how about - "which is fastest" rather than "which is cheapest?" Crank your teraflops at that

  • Broken in Safari? (Score:3, Informative)

    by e2ka ( 708498 ) on Thursday December 08, 2005 @03:31PM (#14213470) Homepage
    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.

  • Dupe by Google; try Métro (Score:3, Informative)

    by NuShrike ( 561140 ) on Thursday December 08, 2005 @05:04PM (#14214278)
    Looks like Google is duplicating the efforts of Métro [nanika.net] which ALREADY covers over 300 cities all over the world using your PDA (Palm, PocketPC, MS Smartphone, Symbian, others), and i-Métro [chotto.free.fr] 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.

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