Network West Midlands - Live Bus, Train and Metro Map

Network West Midlands - Live Bus, Train and Metro Map


Interactive Travel Map - this is information overlaid on to Google Maps showing live information from http://www.networkwestmidlands.co.uk/

The Interactive Live Map shows:

• Bus stops (real time bus timetables, where available) rail stations (train departure and arrival times) and Metro stops.
• See forthcoming departures (live for rail and bus)
• Link through to full timetables relevant for each station and stop
• See the 8-letter bus stop code for a particular bus stop.
  

The map functions:

• Search box Type a road, town or village, postcode, bus stop name or bus stop code list matching bus stop results in the left panel.
• Map top strip Tick/untick a checkbox to show/hide those map icons.
• Map & markers You can pan, zoom and scroll using your mouse and the Google map controls (and the small map view in the bottom right-hand corner).
• Left side links Select Rail or Metro to list local rail or metro stops
• Left panel Bus stops matching your search are displayed as lists of links.
• Quicklist Moves the map to an locality on the drop-down list.
  

View the Live Interactive Map
http://netwmtravelmap.com/

Google Maps Mobile (3.2) More Layers

Google Map Mobile (3.2) More Layers


New Layers come to Google Maps for Mobile Devices

The new version, 3.2.0, adds a 'Layers' of information displayed on top of the map background to assist users to find out features and real-time incidents and transit information.

Google have updated Google Maps Mobile and there are new features such as:

• Wikipedia Layer
• Transit Layer - with real-time data
• MyMaps Layer - add your own content from MyMaps.
• Nearest features - search around your current map location.
  

Layers make it easier and more useful to find and interact with geographic content, like public transit, traffic (with incidents!), local search results, Latitude friend locations, Wikipedia and more. You can also see your own My Maps content as a layer on Google Maps for mobile. And finally, multiple layers can be combined at the same time to give you a content-rich view of what's around you.



Updated Release Notes:
http://www.google.com/support/mobile/bin/answer.py?answer=156059

Related Post:
A nice roundup of the features are available from AllAboutSymbian
http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/item/10160_Layers_added
_to_Google_Maps_fo.php

Official Source:
http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2009/07/layers-of-fun-in
-google-maps-for-mobile.html

Live Traffic Reports Google Maps (Los Angeles)

Live Traffic Reports Google Maps (Los Angeles)

"The Los Angeles region is widely known for its extreme traffic, and a study released just this week by the Texas Transportation Institute reports that LA has the most significant congestion in the United States. It goes on to estimate that commuters in LA spent 485 million hours idling in traffic, wasting 367 million gallons of gas."
(hint: have a smaller engine or get on a bus)


Go to Google Maps (in Los Angeles) and hit Traffic and you get real-time incidents mapped.
A click-able icons and informative data to help advise on an alternative route.


The LatLng Blog Highlights the Los Angeles Traffic and Transit issues

"However, Los Angeles also has an extensive public transit network, operated by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro), and today we're excited to introduce them as the newest addition to Google Transit. Metro operates 5 rail lines and nearly 200 bus lines within Los Angeles County, logging an average of 1.5 million weekday boardings."

"As a part of Google Transit, Metro's itineraries will now appear as an alternative with the "Public Transit" link when a user searches for driving directions within their service area to remind commuters of the availability of public transit. Turning on the Traffic layer in Google Maps to get an idea of what congestion awaits may provide even more motivation to try take advantage of Metro!"
http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2009/07/take-ride-with-la-metro-in-google.html
(and source)

How useful is this?
Well being real-time and accurate it seems to work extremely well. If only all cities made this data available then the amount of fuel consumption and wasted hours in traffic could be reduced.
Well done Google and the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority for making it available for the public.

Talk to the Map! [Google Maps on Android]

Talk to the Map! [Google Maps on Android]


(this video jumps to the 'speak moment' in the video once play is 'clicked'

• Speak to the Map and and search.

• Google Transit - Pubilc Transport live date (where available)
  

• Google Maps for Android includes some big improvements to Google Latitude. (location will continue to update as long as your phone is on.)

• New experimental feature called Updates that lets you communicate with friends and post messages. (Your friends will also need to download this new version of Google Maps for Android)

• Street View in Google Maps on Android is no longer its own map mode, Now integrated into the map where street view is available.
  

Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry2gaJgmgiU

Source:
http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2009/06/search-by-voice-and-transit-directions.html

More Google Transit Cities - Canada & Brazil

More Google Transit Cities - Canada & Brazil

Google have quietly added a few more cities to Google Transit.

The New Cities are:
Calgary, Alberta Canada (provided by Calgary Transit)


View Larger Map

[Embedded Map cannot be seen in RSS Readers please go to
Mapperz Blog to see the Map]

Edmonton, Alberta Canada (unlisted here) provided by Edmonton Transit


and Belo Horizonte Brazil provided by BH Trans

Google Transit Map UK

Google Transit Map UK - Real-Time Transit Information

Nothing new but a UK first, data from Traveline Southeast
for the Map above

Shame Transport for London (TfL) cannot make use of this.
They have the feeds (rss based) now.
Automatic Geocoding has undesired results (some outside the UK)

There is good coverage particularly in California, US
see more transit areas
http://maps.google.com/transit

Why only the South East?
It's all down to sources, currently only Travel Line have there data in the correct format for Google to read and be able to map it.
It's early days for this in the UK, hopefully National Rail and Transport for London & others start providing this information for third parties such as Google.
try:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/01/public-transit-made-easy.html

Transit Feed Specification is available here
http://code.google.com/transit/spec/transit_feed_specification.html
hopefully this blog gets read by the companies to make it happen.
Again there will be copyright and legal issues on what can be done with the data

Google Maps includes Transit Data

Google Maps includes Transit Data


Formally they only way to access this for the 21 (most in the US) cities was via
http://www.google.com/transit

But it seems from today that is now available via the Google Maps main portal.

It's a good way to help get information to the user, real-time traffic can also be overlayed to see any potential delays.

The coverage hopefully expands and in due course 'city' commuters will be able to access it via mobile devices.
No European Cities to date.


try it out here:
http://www.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&geocode=
&time=&date=&ttype=&saddr=university+washington
&daddr=robinswood&sll=47.598755,-122.199554&sspn
=0.10441,0.32135&dirflg=r&ie=UTF8&ll=47.651281,
-122.202301&spn=0.13414,0.32135&z=12&om=1&layer=t&start=0
(time for tinyurls google?)

Mapperz Source:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=6507

Now there is an Official Post from Google LatLong Blog on this topic.