Public transit soon to be made easy
Google maps has recently added public transit routes for select cities. Instead of driving directions you can switch to directions including walking and public transit! This news is very exciting to me for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, Toronto is a nightmare to try and navigate if you need anything more than a simple subway trip or single bus route. Have you ever pulled up the PDF bus routes map from the TTC website? It is a rats nest. Additionally the TTC has one of the worst transit websites that I have ever seen and I wouldn’t trust them further than I could throw a trolley car to improve it. If Google is able to integrate TTC and GO Train data it would make navigation in Toronto as easy as breathing. Perhaps that is slightly exaggerated but you get the point.
Secondly, students who are looking for Off-Campus housing here in Kitchener/Waterloo would have a much easier time of learning the route they would need to take everyday instead of trusting landlords to tell them or having to figure it out from the GRT website. I would certainly be integrating walking directions into our Off-Campus housing and Sublet systems.
I wonder who I have to pester to get GRT, GO Transit and the TTC to open up their routes to Google.
This is AWESOME news, but I’m not holding my breath for getting Canadian transit routes put up. Google has yet to put up traffic conditions for Canadian cities, and I expect it will take them equally long to bring this feature up to Canada, too. But you never know. Google just might surprise us this time.
Taking the TTC blows, the website (which uses java) sucks like a dyson. The 2 meg pdf takes a ridiculous amount of zoom just to find anything. GO transit on the other hand from my two rides this year is a very nice experience. Maybe once Google is finished mapping out the TTC they could teach the TTC how to clean stations, street cars, buses and subway cars. While they are at it they could also teach the TTC collectors some f***ing customer service skills. I can’t understand why someone who gets paid 20 something bucks and hour can be so rude. I’ve never once seen a collector be polite or offer any type of customer service. I get better service from the dude at Harvey’s who makes 7 bucks an hour. They should seriously contract out some of the collector booths. Then the rest of the dumb asses would realize they are doing a minimum wage job and should be happy… Opps this turned into a bit of a rant…