Comments on: Mapping Bay Area Transit

By: Eric

Eric — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 18:13:55 +0000

Thanks for writing in, Wes — very glad to hear you like the maps.

Regarding the stop labels differentiating inbound/outbound: the reason why that wouldn’t always work is that certain stops have both inbound and outbound buses. For example, the stop on O’Farrell between Taylor and Jones is used by inbound 38 buses, but by outbound 27 buses. And a bus stop could also be served by multiple transit agencies (e.g. GGT and Muni joint stops), but other agencies don’t use the inbound vs. outbound terminology. The stop could be labeled differently for different lines, but I wasn’t sure if that would just confuse the issue, to see an “Inbound” label, but with some buses labeled as “outbound” in the description. Then again, maybe it would be clearer: I’d be interested to hear other’s thoughts on this.

By: Wes

Wes — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 18:10:16 +0000

Love it! You’re absolutely right about people not taking transit just because the maps/websites aren’t easy enough to use. When you think of it that way, maps like this are incredibly lucrative investments.

It would be nice if the labels could differentiate between inbound and outbound stops, by the way.

By: Eric

Eric — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 19:15:17 +0000

Hi Jeff, I've got a lot of Muni lines beyond those here that are partially or largely complete, but it'd be great to take a look at what you've done and see how it could be incorporated. Can you drop me an email? (There's the contact form, or you could also just send it straight to the Gmail address I used to reply to your Ecker email.)

By: Jeffrey W. Baker

Jeffrey W. Baker — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 18:54:22 +0000

Hi folks. I have KML maps of several Muni lines, including the 1 and the 1 Express lines, the 38 and 38L, and a few others. How can I contribute them?

By: Eric

Eric — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 01:17:07 +0000

Tommy, glad you’re enjoying the maps. I guess there’s a bit of a trade-off in that these maps don’t offer schedule information or a planner as Google’s offerings do (not that schedules are especially relevant now, at least for Muni). But the emphasis is a little different, I guess.

Yeah, I was thinking a collaborative effort could be quite useful, especially since this sort of tool is easily expanded to any agency around the Bay. Incidentally, it’s easy with MyMaps, which includes collaboration for anyone with a Google account. But it’s been useful to spend time to standardize what things should look like.

P.S. Sorry it took a day for this comment to go up. I’m not sure why the spam-catcher thought your comment was spam, since there wasn’t even one link, but hopefully it shouldn’t happen again.

By: Tommy

Tommy — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 16:56:39 +0000

Wow Eric! This is definitely a step up from even google’s own offerings in my opinion. I’ve been looking for something like this for quite some time.

I was thinking rather than burdening you with data entry, perhaps you could figure out a way to either provide a tool to enter data and allow others to contribute (with some sort of editor’s “approve/deny” function on your end) or just provide a tutorial for others to create these map ponits and let the masses go to work.

By: Andy Chow

Andy Chow — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 03:29:17 +0000

It was a new version to what Jamison created a while back. I need a new version so I can integrate Google Maps and other extensions.

It is a temporary situation. I am planning to get a new account soon with a new domain name.

By: Eric

Eric — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 01:49:19 +0000

Integrating these into a wiki is definitely an interesting idea, maybe to establish some context. For instance, someone wouldn’t be able to load every single map simultaneously, so to supplement it, I was going to put together a neighborhood guide of sorts. So that even if you didn’t know which lines went where, if you at least know which neighborhoods you intend to travel between, then you can just add the lines that would be of interest. That sort of thing could fit well into a wiki.

The wiki you linked: isn’t that the one Jamison set up awhile back, or is it another one? It looked familiar, and I think I created an account on that but never actually posted. These transfers here I’ve done manually, but some sort of automation certainly seems like it should be possible as well — and especially helpful on places like Market Street.

By: Andy Chow

Andy Chow — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 01:44:35 +0000

I am thinking whether there’s any coordination opportunities with the Transit wiki project: http://copy2000.net/test/Main_Page

This wiki can display Google Map KML files.

I am wondering whether you have to manually edit the transfer infomation on the map.