Transit and bicycling Google maps that Washington still lacks

Transit

Transit and bicycling Google maps that Washington still lacks

by David Alpert • June 10, 2008 1:10 pm

Commenter and blogger Michael Perkins noticed that WMATA has changed its position on working with Google Transit. Before, they argued that their schedule data was "proprietary"; now, they are working with Google, but John Catoe says the results "are not accurate enough to release to the public."

In other Google Maps news, there's a new mashup for New York City, Ride the City, showing how to get from one place to another by bike (a feature which has its own advocacy blog). You can choose the safest route, a safe but more direct route, or the most direct route. Unlike regular driving directions, it includes greenways but excludes freeways. Let's get something like that here in DC! Via Streetsblog.

9 comments

Tags: bicycling, Google, WMATA

Metro "punts": Will release transit schedule data for Google and others (Mar 11, 2009)
Google Maps launches bike directions (Mar 10, 2010)
Google Maps: Bike There (Mar 6, 2008)
WMATA, ART close to Google Transit participation (Feb 25, 2010)
Metro refuses to participate in Google Transit (Dec 13, 2008)

David Alpert is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Greater Greater Washington and Greater Greater Education. He worked as a Product Manager for Google for six years and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He loves the area which is, in many ways, greater than those others, and wants to see it become even greater.

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It looks like the air pressure in Senator Obama's tires needs to be topped off...

by Bianchi on Jun 10, 2008 1:19 pm • link • report

oops. I meant to put that under "Cheers and Jeers" below.

by Bianchi on Jun 10, 2008 2:10 pm • link • report

Hmmm, a very convenient service is denied because it's still not "accurate enough". That's the same crap he said when he pulled the plug on NextBus, which had a not "accurate enough" success rate of merely 80%. This is compared with the published bus schedule's accuracy rate of a cool 0%.

So basically, in Catoe's book, we're better off knowing nothing than knowing mostly.

by reid on Jun 10, 2008 2:36 pm • link • report

What about street view for DC?

by Steve on Jun 10, 2008 4:17 pm • link • report

Check this out for DC (Still a work in progress)

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=110783320719658065016.00044dd2d8be7ffaa7b6a&z=12

And the region

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=110783320719658065016.00044d9e699d7ab22e220&z=10

by washcycle on Jun 10, 2008 4:33 pm • link • report

The best I've seen is a site for Portland, Oregon and Milwaukee, WI at: byCycle.org

It seems like they do all the routing themselves, based on donations. Maybe people in DC could put some donations together and get the site to add DC?

by D.J. on Jun 10, 2008 6:13 pm • link • report

I'm surprised Google didn't encourage them to just throw a "beta" on the top of the page and leave it at that. ;) Seriously, I'm going to PARP (Metro's FOIA) some documents to see what's going on with this.

by Michael Perkins on Jun 11, 2008 6:08 am • link • report

And what about Google Street View? According to the blog of the Google Earth and Maps team, they've just added street view in 37 new areas (http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2008/06/street-view-turns-1-keeps-on-growing.html) including such the metropoli of Syracuse, NY, Greenville, SC and Tulsa, OK.

Still no DC metro area. Perhaps there's a claim of national security, but it's navigating Rockville or Springfield where Street View would really help.

by Doug on Jun 11, 2008 10:49 am • link • report