I'm happy to announce we've added directions for Vancouver's TransLink buses, trains, and ferries to Google Maps. Now, any time you search for directions in the Lower Mainland using Google Maps, you'll see a "Take Public Transit" link above the driving directions. If you click on it, you'll see a few ways that you can get to your destination using a combination of buses, SkyTrain, SeaBus, and West Coast Express. For example, here's a route from Pacific Central Station to Lonsdale Quay:
Since Vancouver is our first Google Transit city in Canada, I made a special trip to meet with TransLink folks and local transit advocates last week. TransLink has big goals for reducing carbon emissions in the region while helping residents and visitors get around (especially during the 2010 winter Olympics), so we're happy to help them reach a broader audience through Google Maps. By sharing their schedule information with us in GTFS format, TransLink will also able to make their route information more accessible to non-English speakers and the visually impaired (Google Maps is available in many languages as well as in a plain HTML version that works with screen readers).
This is another exciting step for us, but our work is far from done. We'll keep you posted on our progress as we continue to work with more transit agencies to bring their routes to Google Maps.
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