You may remember when Google released Google Transit, a version of Google Maps that gives you directions for public transportation. It's a fantastic tool that does exactly what you want--shows you a map and directions of where to walk, what bus to get on, where to get off and walk afterwards (or between buses), etc. This information already exists in most transit systems' online trip planners, but the interfaces are usually so bad that you need to also use mapping tools. (Unless you already know your route and only need timetables.) Google's interface even lets you enter your route in nearly-natural English (for instance, "from 459 N 36th St seattle to 915 E Pine St, Seattle at 9pm"). Making public transportation easier to use will get people out of their cars, which is necessary for a bright green future. We're also particularly excited about Google Transit because we helped make it happen.
The only problem was, Google Transit just existed for Portland, Oregon. Now, however, they have it for five new cities: Seattle WA, Pittsburgh PA, Eugene OR, Tampa FL, and Honolulu HI.
What's even more important is they have published the Google Transit feed specification, so any city that wants to have the Google Transit interface can just write some code to translate their trip planner's output into something Google can read. (And by the way, they licensed the feed spec under a Creative Commons "Attribution-ShareAlike" license. They're really doing things right.) All transit systems' trip planning software is written by a small number of companies who keep their programs proprietary and expensive so they can stay in business; unfortunately this gets in the way of the end product and the users. (It would be nice if their revenue model could change to getting a fee based on ridership, or ridership referred through their trip planner, rather than fixed fees for time and project completion. Then the correct incentives would be in place.) Google understands that having an open spec that people can write to, rather than charging people to do the translation for them, is the best way to spread the innovation and make the system as ubiquitous as possible.
The ultimate tool for making public transit easier to use would get multiple systems to work together. For instance, in the San Francisco bay area, if you want to get from Berkeley to Stanford you face a three-hour odyssey involving four separate transit systems--two bus systems and two light rail systems. In New York, a trip might involve both buses and the subway. Or perhaps it could be used for long-distance commuter park-and-ride planning. Hopefully the next iteration of Google Transit's feed spec will be usable as a universal translator for transit systems, so that you enter your desired route into it, then it feeds the data not just into one system and back out, but from one system to the next to the next so that it all works as a seamless whole. This is obviously a much harder problem, and it would no doubt require cities to work with Google and each other to develop this as an open standard, but it would be tremendously useful to the public, and would hopefully get thousands more people out of their cars.
