Represented US cities:
* Bay Area, CA BART, Caltrain, VTA
* Burbank, CA Burbank Bus
* Davis, CA Unitrans
* Humboldt County, CA Various
* Modoc County, CA Sage Stage
* Orange County, CA OCTA
* Rio Vista, CA Rio Vista Delta Breeze
* Sacramento, CA Regional Transit
* San Diego, CA MTS
* Thousand Oaks, CA Thousand Oaks Transit
* Grand Junction, CO Grand Valley Transit
* Tampa, FL HART
* Honolulu, HI TheBus
* Chicago, IL CTA
* Pioneer Valley, MA PVTA
* Detroit, MI SMART
* Duluth, MN Duluth Transit
* Statewide, NJ NJ TRANSIT - trains only
* Las Vegas, NV Monorail
* Reno, NV RTC RIDE
* Eugene, OR Lane Transit District
* Portland, OR TriMet
* Pittsburgh, PA Port Authority
* Austin, TX Capital Metro
* Dallas, TX DART
* Lubbock, TX Citibus
* Hampton Roads, VA HRT
* Seattle, WA King County Metro
* Walla Walla, WA Valley Transit & Grapeline
When I saw that my city (Knoxville, TN) wasn't listed, I shot off a simple e-mail encouraging our transit department to look into utilizing this technology. Google Transit allows users to adopt a trip plan, then using routes and fare information, it gives you an algorithm that uses public transportation and good-old walking (though more of the former) to get you where you want to be. It also includes fare information - which is usually much less than it would cost in gasoline.
My e-mail:
Hello, my name is **********. I just moved to Knoxville last fall from ********. I'll be attending UTK beginning in summer, and I plan on using public transit as much as possible. I am writing you today to encourage Knoxville transit to look into getting their routes and relevant information on a new Google search engine. http://www.google.com/... (Google Transit) allows users to "go greener" for their vacation trips or everyday excursions. The site allows trip-planning using solely public transit. Unfortunately, Knoxville (and a great number of cities who could use this technology's help) isn't on the site plan. I hope Knoxville transit is able to utilize this site, as it's very helpful for people who may not know how a city's public transit works. I found Knoxville's transit system on your website, as I'm sure many people do. This would be just another way to reach the masses and encourage responsible travel. Thank you for your time, and I sincerely urge you to look into activating Knoxville transit on this informative and encouraging system.
Sincerely,
*******
So, is your city represented? If not, why not shoot off a quick, simple e-mail to your transit agency and encourage them to look into this? It takes a couple minutes and might have a real impact. We all use Google searches pretty frequently (I do several times a day) - if more users and cities were to employ this new maps system, we could see a great impact on transit use, funding, and technologies.
To be even more helpful, you can include the contact e-mail for transit departments to get in touch with Google: maps-transit-content@google.com
What do you guys think? Are you gonna act?
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