http://www.transitgeek.com The latest updates and news from transitgeek.com transitgeek@yahoo.com en-us (c) Copyright 2009 , TransitGeek.com http://www.transitgeek.com/index.php#Website-Spotlight:-City-Go-Round City-Go-Round is a new website that advocates for transit agencies to provide open access to transit schedule databases and real time information if agencies have the information. The website also showcases a variety of apps that have been created using data from transit agencies that do provide open access to data. This is very important as it is clearly apparent by looking at City-Go-Round that the transit agencies that provide open access to data allow independent developers to create public transportation applications that help make it easier for the general public use public transit. http://www.transitgeek.com/index.php#New-mapping-visualization-added-to-TransitGeek TransitGeek now features Google map visualizations primarily of intercity interaction of transit agencies. Simply browse through the TransitGeek website as usual and look for the map towards the bottom of each page. Depending on the transit available between cities, certain options of displaying connections will be offered on the map. Now that this feature is working, TransitGeek will see less updating for some time as the owner of this website will be working on other projects for a few months. http://www.transitgeek.com/index.php#More-sites-cataloged,-new-feature-in-development There are some exciting new things coming online at Transit Geek. After months of sifting through and cataloging the websites of California, Transit Geek estimates that now about 75% are cataloged. There are still a number of developer applications and advocacy websites that are likely not yet cataloged.As mentioned before, a google map is now in a test phase of development. The first demonstration shows the relationship of the number of websites allocated to certain places. The orange circle represents the currently selected place; the blue circle represents child places; and grey circles reprsent children places of the parent place. Each are scaled based on the number of websites allocated to each place. Eventually lines representing connections via transit agencies will be draw to connect the places. Check back on the following link to view the progress of the development of this new feature: view the places of Washington State. http://www.transitgeek.com/index.php#TransitGeek.com-back-online A big apology is due for some serious downtime experienced by this website (over 3 weeks)! The matters causing this have been taken care of to prevent such an event in the future. In the meantime more websites are being added from California (over 200 so far). Also, TransitGeek is working on a new feature to help visualize the spatial distribution and connection of transit websites over Google Maps. More to come soon! http://www.transitgeek.com/index.php#Idaho-State-Complete Well, for a very rural state it didn't take too long to find what seems to be all the links to transit websites in the State of Idaho. The state is criss-corssed fairly well from east to west by a few National corridors. In the panhandle, Amtrak and Greyhound both make a stop. In the south Boise serves as a intercity hub with a variety of providers. There are still a number of transit agencies in existence in Idaho although a number of the websites seem to refer the user to their phone number just to make sure enough reservations have been made to make the trip worthy. http://www.transitgeek.com/index.php#Oregon-State-Complete After a bit of surfing and exploring some interesting blogs, TransitGeek now contains all links to transit websites in Oregon. Portland as expected had the most websites with a number of interesting blogs all focusing on slightly different experiences mainly having to do with TriMet, the region's mass transit agency. The northern Willamette Valley between Portland and Salem is fairly well connected by a number of rural transit agencies such as CARTS and the YCTA. The Oregon Coast is almost entirely connected from end to end by a variety of transit agencies with only 3 gaps in service easily overcome with a bicycle. http://www.transitgeek.com/index.php#Website-Spotlight:--TransitFly Ever wondered what transit options existed at the airport you are flying to? TransitFly helps people find out what alternative transportation options are available that can help save money and reduce congestion. TransitFly provides information on local transit agencies and reviews of transit service at a number of airports in the US and abroad. http://www.transitgeek.com/index.php#Website-Spotlight:--Walk-Score's-Transit-Maps-and-Estately Trying to find a place to live or work that is transit friendly? These two websites can help you out. Walkscore.com has just added a new feature that can show how far it is possible to travel within a certain time frame. It is pretty interesting to see how far it is possible to travel on transit depending on how close one is to a major transit facility. Estately has added an option to search for real estate near certain transit lines. This can be especially helpful for people trying to find a place to live that is close to transit routes that go to their work. http://www.transitgeek.com/index.php#A-few-More-Sites-Added There are now 367 total websites documented here on TransitGeek. Lately, I've been sifting through a couple hundred links to primarily blogs, advocacy sites and unfortunately some dead links as well. Eventually dead links will be an issue and I pledge to eventually write some kind of script in the future to help me check for dead links from my site. In the meantime, the next websites I'll be sifting through will be websites from Oregon, Idaho and California. http://www.transitgeek.com/index.php#Website-Spotlight:-Bus-Station,-Headway-Wiki,-LA-Transportation In my exploration of transit websites on the interwebs, I have found a number of websites that have already attempted to catalog all transit related websites on the net. These include Bus Station, Headway Wiki, LA Transportation Blog and RailroadData.com. In spite of this, I'm still going to press on and keep adding websites mainly because I'm personally interested what is out there and am enjoying learning php. http://www.transitgeek.com/index.php#Update:-New-sites-and-RSS-feed I apologize for the lack of updates lately. However, I've been working hard on getting more websites added and have since created an RSS feed. I have just uploaded some 150+ websites, mainly from the United States. In the near future I hope to write some tools that will help automate the process of finding new websites. http://www.transitgeek.com/index.php#Website-Spotlight:-MyBus.org MyBus.org is a unique website with transit information. MyBus.org is funded and maintained by the University of Washington and has a variety of transit information tools available to use. The highlight of the website is the real-time arrival information it provides for all King County Metro buses in the Seattle area. MyBus.org not only has a custom interface to show times, set alarms for when a bus comes near, or even view buses position on a map, but it also provides webservices with all of the above information. The availability of this information has spurred at least 7 different personal projects (including one by me) that use this data to provide real-time bus arrival information or other transit information. http://www.transitgeek.com/index.php#Washington-State-Complete I am pleased to announce that TransitGeek.com has now added all 105 websites with transit information for Washington State. The websites added include all kinds of transit agencies including 14 transit agencies that operate marine transit and nearly all of the rest providing bus transit. And the size of transit agencies varied tremendously from King County Metro's huge fleet of buses to the Squaxin Island Tribe with a bus route serving its reservation with a connection to another nearby transit system. Nearly every city and transit system is linked together in Western Washington making it possible to travel around the entire Olympic Peninsula or the north-south span of the state using only local transit agencies. http://www.transitgeek.com/index.php#Website-Spotlight:-PublicTransportation.org PublicTransportation.org is a great resource for information on transit agencies inside the United States. The website has a list of links to a number of transit agencies and is organized by states and counties. I will be using the information from publictransportation.org to help me add more websites to TransitGeek.com in the near future. http://www.transitgeek.com/index.php#Website-Spotlight:-Dadnab Dadnab is a really convenient, free and easy to use texting service that provides transit information to cell phones. Simply send a text message with a trip plan or a stop location and Dadnab will send you back a text message with the transit information you requested. Users must be careful to enter the starting an ending locations in the exact specifications of their local trip planning software engines, so it can be a little challenging to use. However, I have personally been using Dadnab for at least a year and absolutely love it. http://www.transitgeek.com/index.php#Website-Spotlight:-Google-Transit Google Transit is one of the most technically advanced transit websites on the internet. The idea of Google Transit is to provide traveling directions from place to place using public transportation. Google Transit uses data provided from local and intercity transit agencies to provide trip plans. This approach has a lot of potential since trips that cross multiple transit agencies can be easily planned. Google Transit has also recently added all of the transit information for the major transit agencies of New York City, which is an amazing accomplishment. Using Google Transit, planning really long trips spanning multiple states and transit agencies are now super easy, like thise one from John F. Kennedy Airport to downtown Philadelphia. http://www.transitgeek.com/index.php#Transit-Geek-Launches On September 14, 2008 TransitGeek.Com officially launched with a database consisting of all countries, but only 15 links to websites.