Having just spent a week in Vegas checking out all that
companies like Google are up to, I was not surprised to see the newest addition to the Google family of helpful Internet
products. In fact, I’d heard about it while gabbing with some Googling buddies a while back, and their presence at
CES was, as you might expect, pretty big.
Google had a massive booth at CES with a big crane that
lifted colorful primary color pillows and dropped them in big plastic boxes, and they demoed their mapping products
among other stuff. Well, along these lines, Google Transit has just
launched in beta. The product is only available for Portland, Oregon, but it offers the opportunity to plan your route
around the city using public transit and/or driving and/or walking. A while back I blogged about a Google maps app that
did this thing for New York.
Now, I’d love to see the Google folks do it. How great would it be to be
able to type in your home address in the, say, West Village, and then your destination on the Upper East Side, and to
get subway stops, bus routes, walking times, etc. This could be very cool.
The Google folks
themselves explain what they’re doing:
Do you live in or near a city? Want to go
someplace—to the airport, to dinner, to work every day—and not worry about the hassles and expense of
driving and parking? Google Transit Trip Planner enables you to enter the specifics of your trip—where you’re
starting, where you’re ending up, what time of day you’d like to leave and/or arrive—then uses all available
public transportation schedules and information to plot out the most efficient possible step-by-step itinerary. You can
even compare the cost of your trip with the cost of driving the same route!
At the moment we’re only offering
this service for the Portland, Oregon metro area, but we plan to expand to cities throughout the United States and
around the world.