Google to guide transit riders
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This morning, Pittsburgh becomes one of six cities making public transportation schedules -- and how best to use them -- available in a venture launched by Google, the online search engine.
The project, available at google.com/transit, allows a user to quickly and easily find what bus to catch, where to catch it and how long it will take to reach the destination.
"It lets users get information on how to get from Point A to Point B using only public transportation," Avichal Garg, product manager for Google Transit, said in an announcement last night from Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.
Other cities involved in the startup at midnight last night were Eugene, Ore.; Seattle; Tampa, Fla.; and Honolulu.
Google has had a pilot program in place for Portland, Ore., since early this year. That experiment caught the eye of travelers and Internet users, as well as officials working for public transportation agencies across the country.
"We got lots of e-mails from users saying, 'This is awesome, I love it, I can't wait till you have it in my city,'" Mr. Garg said. "We also got a lot of e-mails from transit agencies saying 'How can we be involved?'
"One of those agencies was the Port Authority of Pittsburgh."
Mr. Garg called Pittsburgh's public transportation system "a good fit" for what they're trying to do -- which is help people who find it "difficult to look at really large, fold-out schedules, with a bunch of times on it, trying to figure out where to transfer."
"We work very closely with the local agencies," he said. "They're the ones that have the information that we need to make this work: What are the stop locations, the schedules, the routes?"
The Web site for Portland even tells users how long the walk to the bus stop is, how much the trip will cost and what the savings is as opposed to driving. (The Pittsburgh site won't provide this information during its startup phase.)
Route changes and developments, such as how to get around a massive landslide on a major highway, would be the responsibility of the Port Authority, Mr. Garg said. Once someone there forwards the information to Google Transit, the site automatically would be updated.
"It'll be seamless," he said. "It's not real time, but as quickly as the agency is able to publish the data."
Mr. Garg said the project doesn't generate any income for Google right now -- there are no ads on the site yet -- and won't for the foreseeable future. What it does, he said, is expand Google's mission of supplying more information to people over the Internet.
"The more that [information] is freely available and accessible, the more powerful and useful that information is," he said. "We're focused on creating a really great product and focused on expanding it nationally and internationally and getting feedback from users."
To gather feedback, he said, there will be a place at the Web site where riders can contact Google Transit.
"We want to know if the bus suggested is the quickest one," he said.
Feedback regarding a rude bus driver or even a late bus should still be taken directly to the Port Authority.
First Published September 26, 2006 12:00 am
