Comment Portlander here--mostly very cool (Score 1) 325
I live in Portland, so it's pretty cool to see this--couple of comments:
As far as immediate usability goes, the trip planner at http://trimet.org/ is better right now, since you can enter very terse search terms and names of landmarks instead of whole complete addresses for start and end points.
Example--try this in TriMet's page:
STARTING: washington square
GOING: pioneer square
No bothering with addresses, even though this is taking you from a mall way out in Beaverton to the core of downtown Portland. A link to google transit from a google map zoomed to a specific location will fix this issue mostly.
But, this definitely fits a huge need for transit users, because if you don't have a car, it's super annoying to have the only directions to the business/location you are looking for be driving directions. Or, to be looking at a bus route not a map, and vice versa.
As far as immediate usability goes, the trip planner at http://trimet.org/ is better right now, since you can enter very terse search terms and names of landmarks instead of whole complete addresses for start and end points.
Example--try this in TriMet's page:
STARTING: washington square
GOING: pioneer square
No bothering with addresses, even though this is taking you from a mall way out in Beaverton to the core of downtown Portland. A link to google transit from a google map zoomed to a specific location will fix this issue mostly.
But, this definitely fits a huge need for transit users, because if you don't have a car, it's super annoying to have the only directions to the business/location you are looking for be driving directions. Or, to be looking at a bus route not a map, and vice versa.
