Designs on Public Transportation Directions
Google public transportation directions is a great tool. With it you can easily know how to get to an specific place using the best combination of buses, trains and other kinds of public transportation. This could be a great success in Europe, where people are used to go everywhere by public transportation.
The Power of Design
This kind of websites already exist in Europe but it is usually offered by local companies, like the city-specific Transport for London website. Unfortunately, most of these were not very successful adapting for the web great design developed previously for paper. Last weekend I stopped by the Munich central station to get a paper timetable, old style but easy to understand, even if you don’t speak German language. This is the German Trains timetable for the Berlin - Munich connection:
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The Copenhagen city transport website has a less lucky approach, as you can see in the picture below, reading is not that easy. (I use Copenhagen as an example but this is actually happening in several European cities like Munich, London and others).
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The Google Design
The Google Maps approach is by far the best I have found. It is clear, fast and has a printer friendly version. It is also highly interactive, something that others don’t have: e.g. the Munich website displays maps only in PDF format (horrible.)
If you are not familiar with the Google public transportation service, have a look at the following video for a quick introduction.
Some Problems
Although I love the public transit directions on Google Maps I have some worries:
1. Every time I use Google Maps a new button is placed on the map,
2. Why can I edit origin and destination from several places?
3. Some little things (like the bar at the top of the page) make me think that the whole thing could soon become cluttered.
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More Info
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If you are interested on maps and timetable designs I recommend Edward Tufte’s book, "Envisioning Information" for a great inside on the topic.
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While I agree the Google system is great, I would like to point out that the MVV trip planner no longer offers maps only as PDFs, but rather gives the user the option now. Give it a try; it’s a big improvement.