Can I Google My Bus?
By Brian Miller in City of Seattle, Transportation
Wednesday, Jan. 14 2009 @ 4:40PM
Here's a new feature on Google Maps that sounds awesome, but maybe isn't so much? You can now add a transit overlay to your map of choice. According to Gizmodo, Seattle is one of 50 cities worldwide to have this information added. Who's not on the list? Those snobs in New York. Suck it, Big Apple!
Naturally Portland is also on the select beta-testing group with us. Full list, per Giz:
Belo Horizonte, Berlin, Bordeaux, Brasilia, Cairo, Capetown, Caracas, Chicago, Copenhagen, Dallas, Dortmund, Duisburg, Düsseldorf, Ekaterinburg, Essen, Frankfurt, Genoa, Guadalajara, Hamburg, Helsinki, Johannesburg, Kazan, Köln, Lille, Lisbon, London, Lyon, Madrid, Marseille, Medellin, Mexico City, Melbourne, Monterrey, Montreal, Munich, Naples, Nizhniy Novgorod, Oslo, Paris, Perth, Portland, Porto, Porto Alegre, Prague, Pretoria, Recife, Rennes, Rio de Janeiro, Samara, San Francisco, Santiago, Sao Paulo, Seattle, Strasbourg, Toulouse, Tunis, Vienna, and Warsaw.Um, where is Ekaterinburg again? But I digress. As you can see from the snapshot of the Seattle waterfront above, this new Google feature shows the routes but not the numbers for transit lines. Thus we see which ferries are going where (nice), and that there's a Metro line along Alaskan Way (presumably that free, green-and-yellow Benson trolley replacement...possibly to be replaced by a real trolley in the future). See that little blue bus icon next to the ferry terminal?
But which specific Metro route runs along the waterfront, or on the viaduct above? Google isn't saying. Which, for the smarty-pantsiest company in the world, doesn't seem so smart. So then, from your computer or smart phone (including those powered by Google's Android software), you'd have to go to the regular Metro site to find your bus and schedule.
So presumably the actual, useful route information will be included in version 2.0.
1 comment(s)
L says:
Not sure about Ekaterinburg, but in Madrid they only show the underground lines.
Nevertheless, if you manage to click the tiny stop signs you will see the bus lines that stop there. Maybe that is version 2 :)
Posted On: Wednesday, Jan. 14 2009 @ 11:10PM