Google Transit Helps with Finding Public Transportation Routes

This news isn't really new, but it might be responsible for keeping me out of my car most of the last few weeks. Google Transit (http://www.google.com/transit or you can just access it through Google Maps) was a project that came out of Google Labs at the end of 2005. Here is their blog post about it:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/12/public-transit-via-google.html
In October 2007 it graduated from Google Labs to a full fledged Google service and was integrated with Google Maps. Blog Post:
http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2007/10/google-transit-graduates-from-labs.html

Google Transit is great because it allows you to get directions in Google Maps just like driving directions, but instead it tells you which busses or light rail to take (in some cases it will even tell you how much you would save over driving). You can choose a start time or an arrival time and which day you want to travel. It then gives you 3 different options of routes and times. It also accounts for walking times to and from the transit stops (although I've found that I walk faster than their estimation).

This service is not currently available everywhere. To see if your community is covered check the Google Transit page. If you are not covered by this service yet, I suggest badgering your local transit authority to put together the files needed. Send them a well reasoned letter explaining how this would be good for the community along with this link:
http://code.google.com/transit/spec/transit_feed_specification.html
Or, better yet, write a form letter and distribute it so that your trasit authority gets many letters asking them to join Google Transit. Remember the easier it is to use, the more likely one is to use it.