Monday, February 15, 2010

Public transit routing

If you go to Google maps, you can now get directions involving public transit in urban centres such as Toronto and Montreal. These routes will not only show the usual turn by turn directions with distance and projected time but some can also show the transit cost.
This kind of navigation assistance is now also available on your GPS. Garmin offers what they are calling cityXplorer™ Maps. These maps are down-loadable for a price starting at US$10 and include only one urban centre for each download. They cover cities mostly in North America and Europe. Only 2 cities in Brazil and one in the Middle East are covered at this time. Note that this will only add the pedestrian routing if you already have coverage for the city loaded on the unit.
Value for money? Perhaps if you don't already have coverage for the city or you definitely want to explore a city using transit.