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Google maps now has a feature that shows you how to use public transportation to get to your location. It includes the times that bussess should be at the stop and then walking routes to get from the bus stop to your destination. I think this might promote bus use especially for people who are weary of trying something new.
However, I tried this to get from my apartment in Grandview to my boyfriend’s house in Gahanna– a 15 mile car ride across 670– and on the bus google told me it was a 2 1/2 hour ordeal including transferring downtown, waiting for the transfer bus, and walking 3 miles from the nearest bus stop to his house in the suburbs. . .
However, I tried this to get from my apartment in Grandview to my boyfriend’s house in Gahanna– a 15 mile car ride across 670– and on the bus google told me it was a 2 1/2 hour ordeal including transferring downtown, waiting for the transfer bus, and walking 3 miles from the nearest bus stop to his house in the suburbs. . .
That’s pretty big news! Columbus wasn’t listed here:
http://www.google.com/transit
…but once you search for directions on Google, you can click on the public transit tab and the info is there. Thanks for the info.
This is so incredibly awesome. Ten times better than the trip-planner on COTA’s website, which I hear people complain about all the time.
Has anyone used this yet? I’ve punched in a few locations and it seems to do a great jobs of mapping out the best routes with times and everything.
I’m going to use this site all the time. Thanks for the heads up on this.
Awesome! Didn’t know that they had Columbus up yet for this feature (have seen it in other cities).
In regards to your trip time….unfortunately that probably is about right, depending on the time of day.
Now when is Columbus going to get Street View? Keep an eye out for that Google Car!
I tried a search from CMH to High & Broad. It thinks the #52 OSU-Airport Route runs daily, but it’s only a few weeks a year. So that needs modification. I imagine there are probably still some other bugs in there, which is why it hasn’t been announced officially.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&geocode=&saddr=cmh&daddr=N+High+St+%26+E+Broad+St,+Columbus,+Franklin,+Ohio+43215,+United+States&mra=pe&mrcr=0&dirflg=r&date=&time=&ttype=dep&sll=39.982195,-82.94269&sspn=0.073002,0.138702&ie=UTF8&ll=39.980672,-82.945747&spn=0.073003,0.138702&t=h&z=13&start=0
Great feature! Definitely way more useful then what’s available on COTA’s site.
I wonder if they could partner with Google and use better, more direct/reliable data into Google’s system and make something they could link right from the COTA page?
In other news, the #31 apparently would get me from Crosswoods to campus in only 30 minutes. Very impressive, if it actually keeps that schedule.
I wonder if they could partner with Google and use better, more direct/reliable data into Google’s system and make something they could link right from the COTA page?
If Google has the data from COTA for the trip planner, it seems they have already partnered. As for the direct link to the COTA site, is something like the link on this site what you had in mind?
http://www.transitchicago.com/
If Google has the data from COTA for the trip planner, it seems they have already partnered. As for the direct link to the COTA site, is something like the link on this site what you had in mind?
http://www.transitchicago.com/
I thought someone had mentioned some of the route results being possibly out of date? It’s possible Google scraped/crawled the route data from COTA rather than getting a direct feed/official update. But yeah, it is possible they’ve already got the info.
And yes, that embedded link on the Transit Chicago page is exactly the kind of thing I meant.
One of the Google Transit FAQs here is “How can I include public transportation data for my city in Google Transit?”
The answer is:
If you’re at a public agency that oversees public transportation for your city and would like your data to be included, please contact us.
I guess that made me assume that they need to be contacted, but maybe they have a way to just crawl the route data. They are Google after all. It seems they can do just about anything.
When Bill Lhota and some other COTA guys were riding on “my” bus earlier this year they said that google transit was coming sometime this year and that they had access to a working version internally. I assume that means that COTA is working to provide the information to google.
Can someone explain why there isn’t better bus service to CMH? other than the (apparently non-existent most of the year) #52 from OSU, the only bus near there stops about a half mile from the terminal.
It’s actually funny — use Google it to plot a trip and check out the map for the one that uses the #96 bus. It shows the last leg as a walk from 5th avenue, right across the runway to the airport front door. Somehow, I’m guessing that wouldn’t quite work if you tried it.
It’s actually funny — use Google it to plot a trip and check out the map for the one that uses the #96 bus. It shows the last leg as a walk from 5th avenue, right across the runway to the airport front door. Somehow, I’m guessing that wouldn’t quite work if you tried it.
There used to be a route called the Capital City Flyer that ran express from CMH to downtown on I-670 and stopped at a number of hotels. I don’t think it was very well utilized, so COTA canceled it when they were cutting back on service system-wide.
The #92, James Rd route still serves the airport, but I think COTA should introduce more airport service, maybe an extension of the #6 that runs frequently throughout the day.
I’m glad it’s here but it confirms my suspicions about driving to work. My 12-minute commute will become 68 minutes in the morning. It just isn’t worth it to me to wake up an hour earlier so I can save about $1.50 worth of gas. Time is money and I put a very high value on my beautysleep.
Direct service to the airport would be nice but it will never be the norm for trips. 80,000 to 100,000 people come to downtown five days a week from all around the region to go to work. The number of people seeking a trip from Downtown to the airport will never reach this number.
Yes, but there are 26 local routes and 29 express routes serving downtown. It wouldn’t take 80,000 people going between the airport and downtown to support one local bus route.
Does anyone have any idea how many people per day do travel between the airport and downtown? How many total people use the airport daily? How many people work there?
No, it won’t take a lot to support a new route but COTA needs to restore some of the express trips that it got rid of during budget cuts before it starts a new route to the airport. Some express routes went down to 2 trips in the morning and 2 and in the evening. Restoring just one more trip at each time will make the ridership jump. Likewise, both local and express buses are bursting with riders at rush hour. This needs to be addressed too.
I don’t have the data to see where COTA’s greatest needs are, but I suspect that you’re right about minor improvements to existing express routes being more critical at this time. That’s why I suggested extending the #6 to the airport first.
Oh, and welcome to Columbus Underground.
In my previous life, I did a request of information about downtown trips from the airport. The estimate I received for 2005: 67,200 taxicab trips from the Airport to downtown for the entire year.
I want to add that I don’t want to knock the idea of a direct transit link from downtown to the airport especially since it’s also a major job center. But there are very good reasons why it might not be the top priority as COTA ramps up service.
I rode the Capital City Flyer a few times and hope that COTA can learn from some mistakes with that service. Information about the service was hard to come by. At one point, they cut the service from twice an hour to once an hour. I also had a driver almost miss me because he drove the route wrong (he said that there were hardly ever any riders at the stop I was at so he decided to go a different way).
Can someone else try the Google Transit site. I searched it the other day and it worked fine. Now when I enter the trip I get an error message saying that my search is outside of the partnered area. I was wondering if anyone else received this error. I really liked the tool the one day that I utilized it and told some friends about it. Now I am going to look dumb since it isn’t working.
I’m getting the same error, even for a simple trip from north campus to downtown.
Well at least it isn’t just me. I thought I was going crazy. I hope they fix the tool soon because it was definitely a great help. I like the fact that it even said how long my walk should take to the stops.