Let our team know what you think of the timetables and maps, below.

These are some notable findings:

• “From 2001 to 2009, the annual number of vehicle-miles traveled by young people (16 to 34-year-olds) decreased from 10,300 miles to 7,900 miles per capita—a drop of 23 percent.”
• In 2009, 16 to 34-year-olds as a whole took 24 percent more bike trips than they took in 2001, despite the age group actually shrinking in size by 2 percent.
• In 2009, 16 to 34-year-olds walked to destinations 16 percent more frequently than did 16 to 34-year- olds living in 2001.
• From 2001 to 2009, the number of passenger-miles traveled by 16 to 34-year-olds on public transit increased by 40 percent.

There are a number of factors that have contributed to these changes.  Fuel has become more expensive (its cost has approximately doubled) and a recession has left many young people unemployed or underemployed.  Changing values and lifestyle aspirations are also contributing.  Young people value convenient access to goods, services, and social resources; they are moving from outer suburbs to inner suburbs and urban areas.  More than individuals in other age groups, they report making an effort to reduce driving trips in order to reduce environmental impact.  Further, their comfortability with mobile communication devices helps them to make alternatives to drive-alone travel more convenient, for example by looking up real-time transit arrival estimates.  Mobile devices also enable people to remain connected to work and friends onboard transit, through email, texting, phone calls, and social networks.  It is unsafe (and, in many cases, illegal) to use this technology when driving a car.

In short, indications are that the trend toward less driving and more travel by transit, biking, or walking, is likely to continue post-recession.  We see this by looking at employed and higher income young people, who are still increasing their use of transportation alternatives.  ”From 2001 to 2009, young people (16-34 years old) who lived in households with incomes of over $70,000 per year increased their use of public transit by 100 percent, biking by 122 percent, and walking by 37 percent” (page 26).  The average young person (age 16- 34) with a job drove 10,700 miles in 2009, compared with 12,800 miles in 2001.

Planners at the local, state, and national levels must take note.  A continued shift in transportation trends means that demand for public transit services, car-sharing, pedestrian and bicycle facilities, and other transportation options will increase significantly.

Transit agencies: Share this report and communicate these trends to local transportation planners and citizens.  If your agency publishes an annual report, include a page in the annual report that identifies broad nationwide trends in travel behavior.  Transit’s constituents, partners, and funders need to understand its importance in the new transportation landscape.

Google Transit team and Google Transit Partners:

Many transit services in small cities operate “loop”-shaped routes.  Trillium has found that the Google Maps UI does not accommodate loop routes in an ideal way, particularly with regard to displaying headsigns.  This post describes the issue in further detail, as well as the great number of services that are affected by this issue.  This post also makes suggestions for how to better accommodate various styles of service and approaches to headsign information in Google Maps.  Feedback and responses from the Google Transit team and GTFS publishers and consumers is very welcome.

In transit itineraries, Google Maps currently prefaces headsign information with “towards” so customers see text such as “Line 6 Bus towards Jantzen Beach.”  (example: http://g.co/maps/d3hcd) In the pop-up bubbles in the map view, Google Maps shows “Line 6 Bus Direction: Jantzen Beach.”  If no value is provided for trip_headsign, Google Maps shows the name of the last stop as the destination for a trip.

This directional information works well for routes that travel outbound and inbound to different terminuses.  However, loop routes start and end at the same station.  Most often, one vehicle operates continuously on loop routes.

Loop routes are a *very* common feature in small transit systems.  The majority of Trillium’s clients’ transit services include loop routes.  50 of our client transit services collectively operate approximately 195 loop routes.

Trillium has found that the Google Maps UI does not accommodate loop routes well.  One of the primary issues concerns the display of headsigns.  Most agencies that operate loop routes express objections to the options currently available for showing their loop services.  “Red Route Bus towards Transit Center” doesn’t make sense, especially if the customer is traveling away from the Transit Center.

To get around this issue, Trillium has prepared some GTFS in which a trip_headsign of “[Loop]” indicates a loop service.  This compromise helps customers understand the idea that the loop route does provide service in different travel directions, however it still yields an awkward result.

This is an example result for Eureka Transit Service: http://g.co/maps/7hsz3

Oshkosh Transit System: http://g.co/maps/5jswe

San Benito County Express operates two opposite-direction loops (Green and Blue Lines).  We use headsigns of “Clockwise” and “Counterclockwise” for these trips: http://g.co/maps/bh5cu

I can provide many additional examples if they would be useful.

I suggest that Google Maps should display destination information in a way that will better accommodate loop routes.  Specifically, I ask that destination/travel direction information should be suppressed in cases where trip_headsign is not provided.  Alternatively, destination information could be suppressed if the stop_id for the first and last stop time records is the same, but this may not cover every possible case in which data publishers may prefer that trip_headsign information is not displayed.

[Update 7-March-2012: I changed the text in the above and below paragraphs, substituting destination information for headsign in many cases.  Earlier, I had meant the GTFS's trip_headsign values with the use of the word headsign, but the phrase "destination information" captures this better.  As I understand it, "headsign" usually refers to the entire text that is shown on the vehicle readerboard (or destination indicator).]

Additionally, there are many cases in which an earlier style Google Maps used to show destination/trip_headsign information yielded better results.  Formerly, destinations were shown after “Direction:” instead of after “towards.”  “Towards” does create a more natural phrase, but “Direction” makes sense with a greater variety of possible trip_headsign values, such as  “Clockwise” (in the case of loop routes), or “Northbound” or “Inbound” (for directional routes).  Therefore, I request that Google Maps consider returning to the earlier display style.

Do any other feed publishers or consumers have feedback or responses regarding this issue?  I am also very interested in responses from the Google Maps team.

Thanks for your consideration,
Aaron

Relevant threads:

“Best practices for loops” (http://groups.google.com/group/google-transit-help-troubleshooting/browse_thread/thread/e09e9578fe4c43ea/024e799fff97f90f?lnk=gst&q=loop#024e799fff97f90f)

Trip_id and block_id for loops (http://groups.google.com/group/google-transit-help-troubleshooting/browse_thread/thread/f56dd192d0a20b54/cb496ff9f1f22696?lnk=gst&q=loop#cb496ff9f1f22696)

More at the rome2rio blog.  Map of Oregon’s intercity services shown below.

I just stumbled upon the report ”Comparison of Essential Air Service Program to Alternative Coach Bus Service”, released September 2011, which considers this idea through a cost analysis.  The report is by M.J. Bradley & Associates LLC, and was prepared for the American Bus Association, Natural Resources Defense Council, Reason Foundation, and Taxpayers for Common Sense.

Download and read the report here for more details.  The study selected a subset of EAS markets where the community was within 150 miles of a medium or large air hub.  The current federal subsidy to air service for the study’s selected markets is about $70 million.  The cost of fares to passengers is about $71 million.  Operating cost for (comparable) alternative ground transportation services in these markets is estimated as $34 million.  In short: ground transportation services would offer an alternative which is significantly less expensive for taxpayers and passengers (25% of the cost).  The services would also produce significantly less environmentally-damaging emissions and consume 28% of the fuel which is presently used by aircraft for these services (considered by volume, not energy content, as aircraft fuel is usually more energy-dense than fuel for other vehicles).

In my view, the study is conservative in terms of exploring and describing potential benefits of the ground-based service alternative.  The study assumes that the ground-based service will offer the same number of trips per day as the air service it replaces.  However, because ground-based service is much less expensive to provide, it would be possible to offer additional frequency and capacity at a cost that is still significantly less than for air services.  Frequency could also be improved, while controlling cost, by using smaller, less expensive vehicles (such as the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter vans, costs for which are described in the study).

Travelers who currently do not use the short-hop air service because of its high cost might find lower cost, higher frequency ground-based services appealing.  More frequent feeder services may reduce connection times at hub airports, and therefore travelers’ overall journey times.

Furthermore, congestion is an issue for many airports.  I know very little about aviation, but I expect that reducing the number of small aircraft landing and taking off would reduce congestion and air travel delays overall.

I hope the discussion continues and develops further.  The realization of a bus service program like this would be a great improvement for the U.S. transportation network.  And as I’ve said before, ground-based alternatives to air travel need to be supported by modern information technology and multi-modal sites for booking travel to be truly convenient.

Now, Google’s Hotel Finder helps travelers find hotels that are conveniently located for their travel mode of choice and a particular location, such as an office, conference center, friend’s house, or area of town. Hotel finder can show hotels by transit time and walking time. Hotel Finder adds to the growing list of tools like Walk Score, Apartment Search, Mapnificent, and Hipmunk that enable people to value transit and arrange their life so transit serves them optimally.

Screenshot of Hotel Finder’s travel time proximity feature below. Read more at Google’s Inside Search blog, “Find hotels by travel time”.

Embark made a great video to launch their app. What I love about this video is that it playfully demonstrates how great public transit and mobile applications can provide people with a new freedom to be spontaneous and explore their city landscape.

Embark from Embark on Vimeo.

My one wish is that I could learn more about the Embark app itself from the launch video. As marketing, however, the video succeeds in the sense that I want to know more about the app after I watch it. Embark could make a few other videos that demonstrate its features, or perhaps they just want users to download the app and discover the features themselves.

Overview videos for Transporter and Routsey (apps for San Francisco Bay Area services) provide a nice example of videos that demonstrate application features.

In related news, the blog of the U.S. Secretary of Transportation (terribly named “Fast Lane”) takes note of open data and mobile applications with a post titled “Transit apps empower riders with information”.

This video shows a demonstration of Nokia Transport.

Brian Ferris and Alex Howard also posted their thoughts and notes.  (Alex’s has pictures and video, too.)

Maybe next year I will get out to Washington DC for the Transportation Research Board conference and a future Transportation Camp.  In the meantime, I appreciate that people have posted about the event.

As silly as this habit seemed, I knew that one day my phone would become useful for indoor navigation.  Indeed, recently Google announced Google Maps for Android mobile phones version 6.0 includes an indoor maps feature.  You can read more about this at the Google LatLon blog.

Currently, indoor maps are available for major airports, and some major malls and large retailers.  No transit stations are included.  However, Google allows people to upload interior diagrams of buildings.  If you want to see a transit station included, upload a map.

UPDATE (14-Dec-2011): Brian Ferris pointed out that interior maps are already available for some transit stations in Japan.  Here’s the list of available interior maps.