Eye Nosh: Is This the Best Pastrami in America?
The Creepy, Yet Beautiful Street Art of Dan Witz Now in L.A.
Does Traffic Get Worse After the End of Daylight Saving Time?
Silver Lake Art Crawl: Also a Food Truck Crawl?
Thomas Keller Comes Home: Book Signings and a Recipe(!)
Using Google Transit, a trip from Union Station to Chatsworth on a Metrolink Train
Last week, vowing to help make NYC transit less complicated, New York City and Google officially launched Google Transit's ability to help people navigate the city. So it got us thinking. If New York City has it and Chicago has it in addition to Orange County, San Diego, Burbank, Irvine, Metrolink Trains and Thousand Oaks, when will Metro, Los Angeles' main transit operator, launch the tool?
"Google Transit has approached us on participating in their service," explained Metro Spokesman Dave Sotero in an e-mail to LAist. "We’re looking at it. In the meantime, we are in the process of making upgrades to our own online Trip Planner." Translation: Google Transit will not be here anytime soon. In the meantime, walking directions throughout Los Angeles are abundant.
The Trip Planner, which people often complain about, has added one new feature that is actually very useful, especially for those who have phones that can access the web.
NexTrip, which is in beta testing, should tell riders when their "NexTrip" will arrive and will also will give customized route information, schedules and maps. We've tested it streetside on Ventura Blvd. and while obtaining the schedule was definitely useful, the arrival time estimate was even better--it came within a minute of when it said. We haven't seen the customized route or maps launch yet, but you can give it a try here.
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
Shameful that a local agency that wants more funds wants to do this in house while Google could do it for them, and probably better, serving more of the public.
Do you know if Google asks for cities to pay for them to do this?
The walking directions are helpful, and for some areas you can get info on taking public transportation from google maps (WeHo). At least they have subway stations. Because of seeing where the closest station was, I took the Red Line to jury duty. :-)
Google Transit is FREE. All they require is a partnership agreement and an xml feed of geocoded data (which comes formatted directly from transit agency's scheduling software systems like Giro/Hastus). It's not a big deal to participate, and the search results can be used by screen reader systems that the visually impaired use. All the info on how to join up is posted on the Google Transit site. It's just plain retrogressive not to do it.
Trip Planner is a steaming pile of shit. Shame on Metro for not providing feeds to Google Transit.