Google Transit

[traal]

For anyone who feels sdcommute.com's trip planner ("OTIS") leaves something to be desired, you now have another option: Google Transit!

[colin]

That's really cool! It still seems to be in Beta form, but it's nice to have a standardized format for these trip planners. I just worry where they're getting their schedule updates and how accurate they'll be.

I hope that they do Tucson's SunTran. I used SunTran's Beta trip planner once to go about 10 miles and it told me the trip would take almost 4 hours.

I actually built one for the UA CatTran shuttle about two years ago, although it couldn't tell you to walk between stops. Not a big deal on such a limited system though.

[traal]

The transit agencies format their data in a certain way and post it somewhere on their own web sites, and Google Transit grabs it from there. So the data comes directly from the transit agencies themselves, who hopefully keep it up to date.

Sometimes the transit agencies need a little coaxing to set it all up, though.