AgentCooper.NET

Today Google released their latest technology – “Google Transit”. Given the time this has been under development in their technology labs — I’m definitely not impressed and frankly I’m surprised they would have made the technology public in its current state.

A couple first impressions:

• They reference the Sound Transit routes as King County Metro; for instance the application will state “Take the King County Metro 545 (EAST)”. I know this sounds like a cosmetic detail but you need to understand that the Sound Transit and Metro buses look completely different. Yes you can still determine the bus by the route number but if you’re anything like me I typically don’t keep an eye out for a Metro bus when I’m expecting a Sound Transit bus and vice versa.
• The local interface (click on Seattle on the main Transit page) is just flat out not intelligent. This page asks for your starting location and destination, if I enter my address (1301 4th Ave) it pops up a bunch of “Did you mean:” choices — all of which are located in the UK! Given I’m on the local Seattle page — perhaps I meant “1301 4th Ave, Seattle WA” and not a location in London, Westminster, Queensbury, or even Bristol.
• The logic determining the most efficient route is just as intelligent as the local interface. It gives me two types of routes when planning a trip from my address up to Eastlake. First it suggests that I take either the 72 or 73 express route up to the University of Washington (which is out of the way) and then backtrack with route 70. The same could have been accomplished by taking the 70 directly from my starting location, eliminating the need for a transfer and would get me to the destination in ~15 minutes rather than ~40 minutes. The alternative it suggests is route 55 up Aurora Ave. (Hwy 99) to Halladay St. and then walk ~23 minutes across Lake Union. I’ll be sure to give this route a try one of these days that I want to perfect my walking on water skills.
• Another disappointment it that the site only offers route planning (i.e. how to get from point A to point B). I would have expected an extended feature set similar to what Bus Monster (http://www.busmonster.com) already provides.

Overall in the first five minutes this leaves a lot to be desired and if I were Google I would be ashamed to have released it in its current form. As a hard core user of the local bus system – I will not be using this site for some time to come.

So the parents (Dad & Step-mom) have been in town the past few days and I’ve been showing them the local sights. On Friday I decided to take them for a trip to Leavenworth, a small Bavarian town roughly 120 miles from Seattle. After pulling off the road to take some photos about 90 miles into the trip, we get back on the highway and immediately I can tell something isn’t quite right, about 5 seconds later the car stalls on me. As some history I’ve had the fuse to the fuel pump blow out twice in the last two months and given this I’ve been carrying some extra fuses. So nothing to fear, the symptoms are the same and I have extra fuses, I’ll swap it out and we’ll be on our way. WRONG! This time the fuse didn’t blow. This now poses a problem, I have my Dad, Step-mom, Sister-in-law, and myself with a busted car ~90 miles from home and ~25 miles from the nearest town; needless to say not an ideal situation. So we go about troubleshooting the car some more and trying to line up a tow truck, meanwhile many vehicles are simply passing us by on the highway, none of which stopping to provide any form of assistance — until about 45 minutes into the situation when camper truck pulled over to see if we needed any help. Angels sent from the heavens they were! They gave us cold water, helped push the car to a more ideal location on the shoulder of the road, provided tools and expertise for our troubleshooting efforts, and ultimately gave all four of us a ride to the nearest town (Leavenworth); talk about good people! I can’t express the gratitude I have to these folks and their generosity…

In case you were curious as to the outcome of the car, I arranged a tow to a local service station once we made it into town. They couldn’t fix it same day so I had to leave it. It’s not a comfortable feeling knowing your car is busted and in a shop ~125 miles from home! Good thing I’ve grown accustomed to using the bus system…