Find Your Way

Metro has some decent tools online to help navigate the city by bus. The timetables are helpful for when you miss your usual bus and are trying to figure out how late for work you're going to be. The trip planner can be of assistance if you can figure out how to "Walk 0.1 mile NW" from bus to bus. Seattlest has no idea who would want to actually do this, but you can even request that paper timetables get mailed to you. It's not explicitly bus-related, but this is a fantastic page for commuters of all sorts. The mother of them all is their java application that allows you to wait until the last possible moment to get yourself to the bus stop. We believe that one originated in the UW Computer Science department.

So we're hopeful that the latest addition to Metro bus web application ring will one day make an appearance on the metrokc.gov site. The wonderful Make: Blog pointed us to SpotBus this morning. SpotBus combines an interface similar to Google's Suggest feature with transit data. Simply begin typing the name of a Seattle landmark and the program will do the rest. Hey, "Seattlest Compound" isn't in there...

Making transit convenient is a vital for decreasing the region's dependence on the automobile. SpotBus is a small but decisive improvement, and it can have a big impact on the way the region uses public transportation.