When you travel or move to a new place, deciphering public transportation can be one of the foremost frustrations you have to deal with; heck, it is often just as confusing for your neighbor who has lived in the city for years! Learning about buses, trains, subways and their various routes, not to mention their respective schedules, is like navigating blind through a forest.
Once you finally manage to map out a daily commute, it is only a matter of time before meetings, appointments and social events will pop up, throwing your carefully-planned schedule off. You’ll be forced to re-examine the entire system, scouring websites, pamphlets and graffitied glass walls, just for a vehicle to take you home. There has to be a simpler way.
The Idea: a public transportation finder/scheduler.
There would be a website and/or application where all one would have to do would be to input the following: their location, their schedule, and their desired destination(s). The easy-to-use interface would then produce the available modes of public transportation, as well as their locations, routes and times. In addition, the website and/or application could be set up to cull appointments from, and to sync with, one's Google and/or Outlook calendars, making the process even more seamless: the results would then be sent to one’s mobile device for updates and reminders.
One more benefit? The ease and convenience of this program would help advance the ‘Green’ movement, promoting the use of public transportation over personal automobiles.
To learn more about the benefits of public transportation check out publictransportation.org
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
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4 comments:
This is available in a few major cities: www.hopstop.com
Aha! Your idea, my friend, is exactly the reason why I've stayed in San Francisco for so long!
The public transportation here is amazing and the methods available to know how to get from one place to another are equally up to par.
If you find yourself in San Francisco, here are the links to use to make your trips on the city buses and trains easy:
http://tripplanner.transit.511.org/mtc/XSLT_TRIP_REQUEST2?language=en
OR the next best thing is also nextmuni.com
ENJOY!
Thanks Terri, we love to hear if an Idea has been put into action. Our site is as much about discovering existing Ideas as it is about coming up with new ones.
Do you have any thoughts on how hopstop could improve their service? Is there anything they do particularly well? Is there anything they do that could be improved?
Ella, great to hear about the San Francisco based links!
Apparently they must free up enough time for you to operate your site - check out Ella's blog "The Trials and Tribulations of Public Transportation" at http://yourjoyride.blogspot.com/
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