Results tagged “maps”

This week, the Metro Transportation Library debuted an impressive set of historical maps depicting transit lines and proposals for routes and systems. Among the multiple versions of our current subway system and systems long come and gone is a proposed monorail from 1960, the transit vision for LA in 1974, the map produced based on the Kelker-Deleuw study of 1925 (when the city's first subway was built), and a map from the time when the Red Line was called the Orange Line.

You've seen the list, you've double-counted and confirmed you're not crazy--it is 105, not just 99, and now you're ready to tackle the task: Eat at all of the restaurants selected by the LA Weekly's Pulitzer Prize-winning food writer Jonathan Gold as LA's essentials. The annual list--err, event for the foodie set--is still fairly hot off the presses, and for many means that no matter how many hot spots they've settled in for a fork, hand, spoon, chopstick, or mouthful, there's still plenty left to try.

Since June, Google has been playing with the idea of tourism itineraries within Google Maps. Basically, the service "helps you identify points of interest and plan multi-day trips to most major cities. You just specify the location of your hotel and the length of your trip and City Tours will map out an itinerary for you," explains Google. Still, it's a major work-in-progress. A search for "Hollywood, CA" doesn't show any local sights, but pushes you downtown. That may not be a bad thing because letting people know about more unknown places like The Grier Musser Museum might be a good idea. The first-day itinerary also tells us to check out the FIDM Museum Shop, The Musuem of Neon Art and MOCA. It also tells us to walk 141 minutes from Hollywood to downtown. Whoa, better get started...

Yesterday was a big day for Los Angeles transportation. Metro, the county's behemoth transit agency, officially announced their partnership with Google. But the county is large and there are various partner agencies throughout. Here's a sampling, with more to come in later days, of where other city transit systems stand with Google Transit:

After much pushing and prodding by the public and media, Metro finally succumbed, quietly launching Google Transit this past weekend. Go ahead and play, it's like we're in a real big city now, catching up with most other major ones.

Google's Street View has gone off roading--in a sense--with their cutely named Google Trike, which has "3 bicycle wheels, a mounted Street View camera and a specially decorated box containing image collecting gadgetry," according to the company.

Today Metro made a big step with an announcement that will give programmers a new tool to make and computer savvy commuters ecstatic. They launched a new beta developer website (and blog!) with two downloadable data sets--GIS and GTFS, or Google Transit Feed Specification, which is used in Google Transit. "This data set is a collection of tabular data describing route, stop, schedule, and fare information for Metro’s system," Metro said in a news release. "The GIS data is a collection of shapefiles for mapmakers who wish to include a layer of Metro Bus and Metro Rail lines and stops into a map."

Earlier this year the LA Times launched their "Mapping L.A. Neighborhoods" project, when they released some maps with basic neighborhood boundaries and offered themselves up to the mercy (or malice) of the public for feedback and input. And spoke we did, giving the project managers plenty to work with, prompting them to make "nearly 100 boundary changes, producing an updated map showing 113 neighborhood subdivisions within the city," they say.

View LAist's LAistory Map in a larger map

    

With almost half of the famous 55-mile corridor within Los Angeles, the Mulholland Scenic Parkway and Corridor offers 15 overlooks of the city, the valley, the ocean and mountains with four more that can be found on the 30 miles of road west of LA.

Google complimented us in an e-mail today for catching their short test on street traffic for Google Maps. Unfortunately, that function isn't fully available yet, they tell us. "We're constantly testing new features to improve Google Maps - one feature we're currently working on is traffic conditions for arterial roads," the Google spokesperson wrote. "Unfortunately we don't have a launch date to share, but the positive response from having it live for just a short time yesterday was great to see, and we're working hard to make it available soon." However, they do encourage people to use the Typical Traffic feature that launched last year. You can plug in a day and time and see what the traffic is like based on past patterns. For example, you're going to LAX at 5 p.m. on Friday, what's a typical traffic pattern? Oh, it's hell.

No longer are the days of checking Google Maps just for freeway traffic, you can now check the conditions on major streets. Have fun out there. As of 5:30 p.m., it's very yellow. Thanks, rush hour.

       

Since City Hall can't do it, it's the people's turn, and oh boy, this is going to be fun. Los Angeles has around 180 official neighborhoods, marked by those blue signs, but ask the city for a map defining borders or for a complete list and you won't get much. Defining a neighborhood, a region or anything gets people angry. It's just one of those super passionate issues where neighborhood council meetings turn into screaming matches.

Franklin Avenue today spotlights someone's attempt to use Google Maps to suggest public transit options to get him from Downtown Los Angeles to Inglewood. Shouldn't be that hard to do, right? So what happened when he plugged in his plan? "Google Maps said the total trip would take 10 hours, 44 minutes by public transit -- and cost $10.50." In fact, that almost 11-hour journey had him getting to Inglewood via...Anaheim! Why does this seem horribly wrong? The answer--or blame--rests with Metro, who did not hop aboard the Google Transit train soon enough to get their routes meshed with the maps. So this trip has the traveler using Metrolink and OC Transit, and not Metro (same happens if you try to plot a public transit trip via Google on the iPhone). We wondered a few months ago if it would happen...it hadn't then, and it seems like it still won't. Silly Metro...what a wasted opportunity you're still ignoring!

As Metrolink announces their inclusion in Google Transit today (although, it's been live since October), Steve Hymon at the LA Times takes a rightfully and just swing at Metro for still not working with Google.

UCLA is big. 419-acres big. And for those of us who did not have the pleasure of attending school there can sometimes find it difficult to get around (how do I get to the Sculpture Garden?). Now the school has released a nifty new interactive map with such tools as zooming in, double clicking to ID buildings/areas, building info (with photographs), overlays, and Google or MSN map directions:

Google and the city of Santa Monica teamed up earlier this year to provide real-time data on the city operated parking lots. It helps you can plan ahead and hopefully save some time when heading to 3rd Street Promenade or the beach.

Over at Central Library, there's a new exhibit on historical maps of Los Angeles worth checking out. The LA Times looks into it and ends on this interesting note: "And what happened to the early downtown streets named Faith, Hope and Charity? Faith became Olive Street and Charity was renamed Grand Avenue. As Los Angeles grew and thrived, people didn’t want to live on faith, Creason said. And they certainly didn’t intend to live on charity." But blogdownton takes a deper look into the three three streets and finds that in order to believe that one of them is truly part of history, it will be a leap of faith.

In an effort to further community relations, LAPD's Northeast Division is hosting their community open house today from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Along with meeting officers and councilmembers, there will be displays by the Bomb Squad, K-9 Unit, LAPD Dispatch Communications, SWAT and others.

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?

After finding out about Metro's new and improved transit map earlier today, we see that Metrolink is now on Google Transit, thanks to ExperienceLA's blog.

Yesterday, Google introduced a new Google Maps feature: directions when on foot. "Starting today, you can tell Google Maps that you want walking directions, and we'll try to find you a route that's direct, flat, and uses pedestrian pathways when we know about them," explained Andy Schwerin, Software Engineer, on Google's blog dedicated to maps. "Just get directions as you normally would. If you're going 10 km or less (some call this 6.2 miles), we'll show you a link that you can click to get 'Walking' directions."

Councilman Eric Garcetti once explained to a group of people that traffic is a sign, a good sign. A sign of a strong economy. If there was no economy, people wouldn't be traveling to their jobs, thus causing traffic.

Beware of the Google Gawker...

Sometimes it seems like this city is out to beat us up, put us down, and lead us terribly astray. Even those of us who have lived here for years can't help but feel let down sometimes by L.A.'s impersonal and often contradictory nature. And we're just talking about transportation. But more often than you might expect, if you just open up and let the city happen to you, you'll find that L.A. is actually your most reliable -- and most exciting -- old friend.

I think reasonable people would agree that ), David Milch, is speaking today for free at the WGA Theater.

Well, if that’s not the reason for us encountering a shortage of a particular cough syrup this week at area drug and grocery stores, then it must be the cold and/or flu season hitting the LA area. (Extra Extra told us on Friday night that the first case of the flu was recently reported in the Valley – so maybe that’s causing the Robitussin run.)

[O]ur friends at Found LA have decided to get together and throw us a party at their amazing gallery in Silverlake (Google Map here), with free drinks and a cake to boot. It goes from 8PM - 10PM this Saturday (12/15) and is bound to be a blast...

TOYS FOR TOTS Everyone has that one special moment when it really starts to feel like Christmas. It might be shopping Thanksgiving weekend, baking cookies or buying the tree. For me, it is that magical moment while stuck in traffic when I am taken unawares by a phalanx of motorcycles zooming by carrying giant stuffed bears on the back. That is truly the spirit of Christmas. The bikers are part of an annual Toys for...