(The following story by Daniel Edward Rosen appeared on the Newsday website on September 24.)
NEW YORK — The world’s largest search engine has joined forces with the world’s largest public transportation provider to begin an online trip planner they hope would make using the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s services – from subways to the Long Island Rail Road – markedly easier.
Gov. David A. Paterson joined Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin yesterday at Grand Central Terminal to introduce Google Transit, Google’s new online MTA planner.
“There are now 8,005,006 people that traverse the 422 bus, subway and rail lines here at the MTA. It’s a very complicated system, and it just got less complicated today,” Paterson said.
Brin said that this system would help him – a self-professed avid user of the MTA system – plan his trips on public transportation.
“Coming from San Francisco here, we’re all jealous and we certainly wish that we would have a public transportation system like this one,” Brin said.
Google Transit allows passengers in the metro area to plan a point-to-point trip on the MTA’s services – including the LIRR and Long Island Bus.
Updates like repairs and service interruptions will be reflected in the itineraries Google Transit provides its users. Directions are also available in several languages, including Spanish and Chinese.
Google Transit’s developers had access to MTA’s data and converted it for their purposes. This meant that Google’s developers had to go through the more than 40,000 bus stops, subway stations and train stations to assemble the system.
“It’s just a huge volume of routes and data,” Brin said.
Starting yesterday, users could log in to maps.google .com/nyc to see when and where they could catch a bus or subway train anywhere in the city, including detailed schedules for each train and bus route. Users will also be able to look up transit directions on their cell phones and BlackBerrys.