At the same time, BART will indulge in one of its favorite traditions since 2003: the seemingly endless rearranging of service for the Peninsula stations and the “Quentin L. Kopp Wye.” On weeknights after 7:00 p.m., and all day on weekends, only the Pittsburg/Bay Point line will serve stations south of Daly City; the line will stop at the Airport before terminating at Millbrae. Weekdays, the Richmond line will continue to terminate at Millbrae, and the Pittsburg/Bay Point line will continue to terminate at SFO. The Dublin/Pleasanton line will now always terminate at Daly City. Under this configuration, the routing of the three lines that terminate at Richmond or Fremont will remain the same as they are now, even off-peak.

This map depicts the service changes on the Peninsula:

San Mateo County service beginning September 14, 2009. Courtesy of BART.

Side remark for transit cartography enthusiasts: This map is different from the usual style, but it is official; BART has been tinkering with alternative system maps. The above image is excerpted from a file documenting the new schedules starting September 14 (PDF). But there is also a full version of the map, which includes other Bay Area rail lines, a separate diagram depicting three-line evening/Sunday service, as well as popular destinations served by BART. A sample of the full map has been on display at the west side of Montgomery Station.

When searching for directions between two locations within San Francisco, the “take public transit” link provides directions using all Muni routes, including buses. And while there are some smaller issues to work out — for example, correct labeling of the K-Ingleside versus the T-Third — it appears to handle transfers between Muni routes and between Muni and BART/Caltrain with relative ease. Trip schedules are based on Muni’s often-fictional timetables, but Google would like to eventually expand the service so that trip routes are calculated on the basis of real-time vehicle information, rather than using static, published schedules. Of course, real-time information is already available locally via NextMuni and NextBus, but Google’s eventual goal would be to use real-time data on its maps for potentially all transit agencies across the nation and beyond, and not just for those that utilize NextBus technology — so real-time integration is on hold. At the moment, the actual locations of San Francisco bus stops are not embedded into the Google Maps, but this feature will hopefully be added soon. Stops would be viewable upon zooming in to the street level, as is the case for BART, Caltrain, VTA, and other agencies around the country.

What does this mean for Transbay Blog’s homegrown, one-man transit mapping project operation? Must The Man always emerge victorious? Seriously, though: while this new feature will certainly save me a lot of work inputting stop information, I do not plan on giving up on this project quite yet. There are still opportunities to use the custom maps as a means of filling in gaps and providing useful information that would not be included in the official Google Maps, and I expect that the project will evolve in this direction. One of my personal favorite features of the transit stop maps is the ability to relate “lay of the land”-style information that does not get reported in standard trip planners — information like Muni Metro accessibility points, and entries and exits to subway stations. Other possibilities include mapping limited bus stops and strategic points to transfer between lines. Lastly, I believe that station guides (with transfers organized by destination, as has been partially implemented on our custom BART map) are a good way to illustrate connections between regional rail and local transit routes. Implementing these features would, of course, require far less time than mapping all stops out from scratch — but they would still supply useful information to ease transit riders’ experiences, particularly when used in conjunction with Google Maps that are filled in with bus stop markers.

Do you have ideas for other supplemental information that is mappable and would be useful in conjunction with an official Google Map of Muni stops? Any impressions about the Google transit directions? Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments.

It is hardly news that Bay Area transit websites are, on the whole, rather lackluster. The 511 Transit Planner has the benefit of covering for the Bay Area’s large collection of transit agencies, but it is sometimes slow and unwieldy, or it offers an inadequate trip path that is based on often fictional bus schedules. And no doubt you have run into the highly colorful vomit officially known as the SF Muni System Map, a document that is confusing enough that you practically have to know the whole system in advance just to follow it. I’ve wondered how many potential riders are sufficiently put off by navigating transit websites that they just decide to just drive instead.

What if you don’t want a whole trip planner? Wouldn’t it be nice to just type in your destination address on Google maps, and not only be able to get a feel for the location via Google Street View, but also see the exact corner where you can hop onto the closest accessible transit option? Or, wouldn’t it be nice to click on a train station icon and see a complete listing of all trains and buses — from any transit agency — that you could easily transfer to, and be just one click away from seeing the route of those transfers, with each and every stop mapped out? Why, yes, you might say.

I agree, and so this is the start of a (potentially long-term) project to create maps, using the Google interface, of transit stops in the Bay Area, ranging from major train stations to minor bus stops. Each stop is labeled with basic information: the buses or trains that stop there and the direction the transit vehicle is headed, as in the above image. In all instances, the precise location of the stop is marked (not merely the relevant intersection), and where necessary, other useful facts are added: e.g. transfer points, whether the stop is on the curb or on a traffic island, which surface light rail stops have accessible platforms, whether the stop receives limited bus service, and so forth. In other words, the goal is to give riders the opportunity to master the “transit terrain” of the area surrounding their destination, even if they have never visited that location before. I believe that this sort of tool could be more useful than a trip planner for many transit riders, but we will see if that is actually the case.

For train stations of regional importance, additional information is provided as to which neighborhoods are easily accessible with a single transfer from that station. Users can superimpose route maps on top of each other to figure out the easiest way to execute a transfer — for example, the above map, which superimposes the 38-Geary Muni bus on top of the BART system map. Of course, because the maps are integrated with the Google Maps interface, you can type in an address and find out exactly where to access transit near your destination. The hope is that these maps will help to remove some of the discomfort people might experience when traveling to less familiar destinations, and to encourage new and infrequent riders to leave their cars at home more often.

Also, because an eventual goal might be to expand this into a regional tool, the information provided would not be agency-specific. If a particular bus stop happens to be served by three transit agencies, a rider would know with a single click which agencies and which bus lines serve that stop, without having to visit three different websites or call three different phone numbers to discover that information. Transit agencies across the Bay Area tend to operate as separate kingdoms, rather than as units within a greater regional network, but these maps could help demystify that network and clarify the connection points that do exist.

To see the maps that are currently available, click here, or click the “Bay Area Transit Maps” link in the “Supplements” section of the sidebar. Right now, the BART map and a few popular Muni lines have been posted. A couple AC Transit lines will be coming next, so that folks in the East Bay can get in on the fun. This is a soft opening to test the waters — even on the maps currently made available, I still need to finish filling in the transfer information, particularly for Market Street, where every stop has a slew of of transfer options. Also, the transfer links on each individual stop are mostly incomplete, because not all the maps have been created yet. This transfer cross-links will become increasingly complete in time.

If feedback seems generally positive, and if the maps are reasonably well used, I will probably add more in the future and announce those additions here on the blog. I would like to leave the comments section of this post free for more general commentary, but if you notice a specific map error that needs to be fixed, please email me.

But hey, this is the Bay Area. Since when has transit here worked the way it should?

Instead of meticulously updated maps, one instead finds a time capsule of sorts, a treasure trove of outdated maps — some rather obscenely so — chronicling a mini-history of service to the Transbay Terminal. The geek in me loves this sort of thing, so here you are reading a post about it. As usual, full-sized versions of all these maps are hosted on my Flickr account, so please click through any image you’d like to see in close-up detail.

One map posted in the Transbay Terminal (pictured at right) shows the entire Bay Area region, clearly displaying our decentralized patchwork quilt of transit agencies. Unfortunately, the design is hideous, and the map doesn’t make particularly clear how one might transfer from system to system, or what the level of coordination is between transfers. In short, the map simultaneously contains too much information and not enough information. It is also shows BART’s terminus on the Peninsula to be Colma, thus not conveying the quite important piece of information that since 2003, BART has terminated at Millbrae, not Colma, and also provides direct service to San Francisco International Airport.

A portion of the bus stop map which indicates a stop for the now-retired 15-Third bus,

but this error is less egregious, since that bus was running up until just a few months ago. Then again, how can we expect the map to acknowledge the removal of the 15, when it also labels the 32-Embarcadero bus,

a line that was disbanded several years ago when its route was absorbed by historic streetcar and Muni Metro extensions. The above picture also suggests that the 66-Quintara bus still runs downtown, something which may surprise its riders.

Another map:

The 12-Folsom line no longer stops where this map suggests. As for SamTrans, I don’t think the TX even exists anymore, let alone serve the terminal, and the map doesn’t acknowledge the PX or RX lines. A quick check of the recent Golden Gate Transit map (PDF) of this area shows several additional errors.

Perhaps the most amusing map of all is the map of San Francisco depicting the current state of freeways… current, that is, if the year were 1989, and the Loma Prieta earthquake had not yet hit. The map shows two fingers of freeway poking north of Market Street. On the right side of the picture is the Embarcadero Freeway, which connected drivers coming off the Bay Bridge to Chinatown and North Beach, but in doing so, separated San Francisco from its waterfront. On the left side is the Central Freeway, which once cast its dark shadows all the way to Turk Street. Probably the best thing about the Loma Prieta Earthquake was that its force damaged both of these stretches of freeway; the structures either had to be fixed or removed. Luckily, the city chose the second plan of action, in a momentous, more recent victory for the infamous Freeway Revolt that started a few decades earlier. Since then, San Francisco has since been reunited with its waterfront; where the ugly, noisy Embarcadero Freeway once stood, the sun now shines (from time to time, anyway) on pedestrian plazas, a historic streetcar line, and a revitalized waterfront and Ferry Building. In the meantime, the Hayes Valley neighborhood, once viciously cut in half by the Central Freeway, is still in transition, since the final work associated with retreating that stretch of freeway to Market Street only finished in 2005. Hayes Valley has already enjoyed some of the benefits associating with tearing down the freeway, and we can look forward to increased vibrancy as empty parcels once occupied by freeway are replaced by new apartments and neighborhood shops.

In any case, neither freeway currently exists, as these Transbay Terminal maps would have us believe. At least the terminal will be demolished in the next couple of years, and if we’re lucky, the new Transit Center might just have updated maps. Check out the time capsule soon, before it disappears!