Monday, July 06, 2009

Go Metro with Google Transit

ExperienceLA.com has always been in support of adding Metro transit information to Google Transit (see our Metrolink on Google Transit post). We were given a hint of this possibility a month ago when L.A. Metro announced that it was releasing transit data for application development including GTFS (Google Transit Feed Specification). Now it's here!*


For those who haven't used Google Transit in other cities (New York and Chicago were among the places where it was pretty much a god-send for me and my iphone!), here's a quick how-to:

Note: Have you ever used it for driving directions? Yeah, pretty much the same deal.

1. Put in a starting address and a destination address. Toggle the drop-down menu of options to "By public transit".


2. The following is an example journey of "Hollywood & Highland" to the "GRAMMY Museum". You have the option of toggling different times. The mapping next to the transit instructions reveal the mapped route you'll be taking. If you press the "+Show Details" about your walk to the museum, you can get your walking directions.



How's that for going green in LA? All the more reasons to Go Metro.

-Charity Tran

*Please note that the current rendition is supposed to be in testing phase, but the functionality should still work. (See LAist)



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