Another round of updates for Google Transit
February 19th, 2009 | Published in Google Earth
Many people around the world tell us that using Google Transit on the desktop or on their mobile makes using public transportation much more convenient for them. We haven't reached our dream of having coverage for all public transit agencies, but we've been working hard to keep getting closer to that goal. Today I am pleased to announce another significant update with the launch of several major updates for full schedule routing around the world and more than ten new cities in the Transit Layer.
As a reminder, with the Google Transit feature on Google Maps you can get step-by-step transit directions in your web browser and on your mobile phone, find transit stops in your area and view station information and schedules. In addition to that, the Transit Layer overlays public transportation lines visually on Google Maps, mostly in places where the local public transportation agency has not yet partnered with us to get their full schedule data online.
Transit full schedules launches
Recently we launched full schedules for Transit among others in Calgary, Hamilton, Edmonton, and York Region in Canada; East Midlands (UK); Houston (TX); 21 agencies in the state of Virginia, as well as a substantial data set in China, connecting all provinces with 3100 train lines, covering about 2700 stations and all major cities (for example, try Beijing to Shanghai). In all those cities you can route around with public transportation by using Google Maps on the desktop or your mobile.
Transit Layer launches
We're adding to the 50+ cities we launched at the beginning of this year. New cities include: Adelaide, Atlanta, Bonn, Calgary, Davis, California, Hamilton, Canada, Pilsen, Sacramento, Torino, Toronto York region, and we've launched updates for Cape Town, Johannesburg and Pretoria. In all those cities you can visually see public transportation lines on Google Maps and interact with the Layer by clicking on stations.
You can find more information about Google Transit and our current coverage at http://maps.google.com/transit.