Archive for November, 2007
Friday, November 16th, 2007
Using Google transit routing on the iPhone
As some people have noticed, right now it’s hard to get transit routing from Google Maps on iPhones, because Apple’s software grabs most Google Maps URLs and sends them to the built in Maps application. This situation will no doubt be improved in the future, but in the meantime, here’s a workaround.
To get Google [...]
5 Comments » - Posted in Google Transit, Mobile by Joe Hughes
Tuesday, November 13th, 2007
Transit stops on your GPS
One of the biggest benefits of transit agencies making their raw schedule data publicly available, as TriMet and others have done, is that riders are free to do interesting things with the information that the agency itself might not have thought of or have taken the time to do themselves.
Case in point: Brett Warden in [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Data Sharing, Google Transit Feed Spec, Mobile, Portland by Joe Hughes
Saturday, November 10th, 2007
Idea: Smooth ride incentives for drivers
One of the reasons why buses are sometimes less pleasant to ride than trains is that they’re much more likely to offer a jerky ride. This probably has a lot to do with the traction afforded by rubber tires and the unpredictability of the street traffic that buses travel in. Either way, when [...]
2 Comments » - Posted in Ideas, Operations by Joe Hughes
Saturday, November 10th, 2007
Idea: More memorable route names
Steve Offut over at CommuterPageBlog posted about how transit systems could benefit from more memorable route names:
I’ll bet you there isn’t a single rider who can explain why those buses are called #2, why there are 6 different ones, why those particular letters of the alphabet are used, and why the 2W and 2T are [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Ideas, Signage by Joe Hughes
Saturday, November 10th, 2007
Vancouver
Last week I embarked on a whirlwind tour of Vancouver to help announce the the addition of TransLink routing to Google Maps. It was fun to get a chance to see the town for the first time (on Halloween night no less—the apparent Canadian tradition of setting off small fireworks on that night made [...]