Uneasy Rhetoric

Wow, and double wow. Google has launched Google Transit, a Google Maps-based utility that allows you to plan your trips using mass transit systems. Right now, there is only one mass transit system represented: the indefatigable Tri-Met in Portland, Oregon.

I wonder how long it will be before Sacramento Regional Transit tries to get itself Googled? It will probably be a while. For one thing, they don’t even have PDA-friendly bus schedules like Tri-Met does, probably because people don’t actually try to get around on RT. They just go home-work-home and leave the rest of the trips to the automobile.

Second, RT is pretty rinky-dink, especially given that the Sacramento metro area is roughly the same size as the Portland metro area (though Sacramento itself is a smaller city). Busses are few and far between, many of the lines only run during the rush hours, even light rail runs late, and they can’t seem to fix the ticket dispenser at the north end of the 4th Avenue/Wayne Hultgren stop. Yeah, it’s still broken. For a while, it was doing okay, but this morning it had some kind of Windows window open, like it had stalled during a restart.

The coolest part? When I clicked on one of the sample routes, it even told me how much it would cost, and how much it would cost to drive! How cool is that? On the sample route, I noticed the route would change depending on the estimated departure time, and once I saw a route that had me making one unnecessary bus trip. Still, this is a great tool.

I hope RT can get its act together enough to get itself on this system. Maybe, just maybe, it will make someone realize that yes, indeed, they can take the bus.

Thanks to Carl. See also Blue Oregon.

Update: Google’s blog explains why they went with Tri-Met:

We chose to launch with the Portland metro area for a couple of reasons. TriMet, Portland’s transit authority, is a technological leader in public transportation. The team at TriMet is a group of tremendously passionate people dedicated to serving their community. And TriMet has a wealth of data readily available that they were eager to share with us for this project. This combination of great people and great data made TriMet the ideal partner.