Google Transit

Posted on the CommuterPageBlog last Friday.

I recently attended a conference held by the American Public Transportation Association. The conference featured a speaker from Google, Thomas Sly, who spoke about Google's plans for Google Transit (www.google.com/transit). It's part of Google maps and is in their "labs" testing phase now. Google Transit allows the user to plan a trip using public transportation as easily as they would get Google driving directions. Google started with Portland, OR and now has transit routes from ten US cities available.

Mr. Sly encouraged those at the conference to give Google their agency's transit route information to allow Google to map it. The cost? Free. So what's the catch? Apparently nothing. Mr. Sly said Google is a green company and they want to practice what they preach by offering public transit information to make it easier for people to get where they are going. All a transit agency has to do is contact Google and they will provide the procedures necessary to get the route information in the format they need. The process can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months depending on how the transit agency currently has their data. Google also has a link available on each page to the specific transit agency for more information.

Conference participants seemed very excited by this project and I expect many of them, if not all, will get Google their route information. Google is helping to bring public transit information to their millions of users and make it an option. I applaud Google's efforts to make transit easy.