I'm not sure how long this has been around but I just discovered another cool product on Google. This is called Google Transit which invites riders of twenty-five transportation services in the United States, as well as eight other countries, to log onto Google Transit and plan their trip. It is still in beta, a standard tag on most Google products :)
I took the product for a test drive, trying to stump it. The NJ Transit option is only for trains so I attempted travel from North Bergen, New Jersey to the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City (a bus route, no trains conveniently located).
Estimated travel time: 2 hours (normally 20-30 minutes on the bus).
- Start out walking to the closest Light Rail station (about 30 minutes on foot)
- Take the light rail to Hoboken (about 15 minutes)
- take the Sufferen train to Secaucus Junction (opposite direction from NYC)
- Take Penn Station train (about 15 minutes)
- Walk to Port Authority (about 9 minutes)
Okay I admit my test wasn't very fair, because they don't offer NJ Bus options on the site yet, but even without any bus options, the test was a success, if a bit time consuming!
I gave it another try attempting to travel from Tampa, Florida to Penn Station in New York and received a polite message telling me they don't have transit schedule data for that trip. I was hoping to receive a message, "walk from Kennedy Boulevard in Tampa, Florida to Grant Street in Salem, New Jersey (over a thousand miles, wear comfortable shoes) and board a NJ Transit train hehe. No such luck.
This transit tool has huge potential. From the broad travel (I'm thinking door-to-door directions going trans-Atlantic) down to the granular level on a city bus, think of all the non-intrusive ads Google can sell along a route. Car service, coffee and breakfast enroute to the airport, parking at O'Hare, airlines, hotels, rental cars, tour agencies, a florist or dry cleaners at the destination of the bus.
I'm sure in a matter of time the google wizards will have options for "go from living room to kitchen and Avoid Highways". I'll take another look at Google Transit in a few months and see what evolves.
I gave it another try attempting to travel from Tampa, Florida to Penn Station in New York and received a polite message telling me they don't have transit schedule data for that trip. I was hoping to receive a message, "walk from Kennedy Boulevard in Tampa, Florida to Grant Street in Salem, New Jersey (over a thousand miles, wear comfortable shoes) and board a NJ Transit train hehe. No such luck.
This transit tool has huge potential. From the broad travel (I'm thinking door-to-door directions going trans-Atlantic) down to the granular level on a city bus, think of all the non-intrusive ads Google can sell along a route. Car service, coffee and breakfast enroute to the airport, parking at O'Hare, airlines, hotels, rental cars, tour agencies, a florist or dry cleaners at the destination of the bus.
I'm sure in a matter of time the google wizards will have options for "go from living room to kitchen and Avoid Highways". I'll take another look at Google Transit in a few months and see what evolves.