Walk about with Google maps

The fantastic folks at Google have added walking to the options when you ask for directions at Google maps. Now you can drive, take transit or walk to your destination.

Here's an example covering a trip I take often from my neighborhood to Watt and El Camino:

Here's the directions that come with the map:

Driving
Transit

Walking

Pretty cool.

* * *

In an earlier post, I ragged on Google for its inability to show a transit option for the wife's trip to work. Google kept showing this:



Apparently Google is getting closer to figuring out how to represent the wife's bus-train-bus-walk daily commute.



Unfortunately, Google still sometimes stretches to make a connection where there isn't one:



Well, it's the thought that counts!

UPDATE: Here's an example of how it's supposed to work when you have to walk:

Fun with Google Street View

Back in November, I blogged about the inherent dangers in the way the buses arriving at the University 65th transit center from the north, east and west drop off riders and then expect them to cross Q Street to transfer to light rail. This discussion was originally prompted by what happened to a couple of blind bus riders. I came up with a handy map using Google Map's satellite view and drew some lines showing my alternative.

Now Google has added "Street View" to some of Sacramento's streets. Here's the street view of where Sacramento Regional Transit expects the blind to navigate when they are dropped off by buses.

View Larger Map

Click on the image and hold the button down and then drag the view around. This is a 360-degree image. Click on the Q St. SE arrow and move to the cross walk that RT says is sufficient for the safety of its riders and then click on the Q St. NW and move back to the station. Obviously, the people who think this is a suitable alternative to having buses drop off people at the station and then entering the bus parking lot are not blind.

Not all of Sacramento has been mapped yet. When you are looking at a Sacramento area in Google Maps use the "Street View" button. This will display blue lines indicating where the street view is available.


You can drag that gold guy to any blue street and then click on him to see the view from that point.

Transit envy

Google has rolled out its new Google Transit for mobile devices at www.google.com/gmm. Sure makes me wish I had a Blackberry phone. But beyond that watch this video and pay close attention to the "Last available train" option.

Did you see that? The guy can go to a concert and party until 3 a.m. before the last train takes him home. Size matters and looking at the size of the Bay Area's transit options makes Sacramento Regional Transit look pitifully small.

This coming Second Saturday, the wife and I plan to ride the No. 82 bus from our house to Sacramento State and a No. 30 bus to midtown. We did a variation of this last month. Since we both have bus passes this is a freebie. Why hassle with parking?

The problem is that Second Saturday runs from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. The last No. 82 leaves Sacramento State at 9:18 p.m. The closest connecting No. 30 bus outbound from midtown doesn't arrive at Sacramento State until 9:21 p.m. That's not going to work. And the next earlier No. 30 leaves midtown more than an hour earlier. So we would have to leave the festivities at 8 p.m. , when things are just starting to get going.

Yeah, I know, we could drive to the light rail park and ride lot at Watt and Interstate 80 and take light rail home as late as midnight, but that just illustrates the shriveled options that pass for transit in Sacramento.

Google Maps and Google Transit -- the video

A picture maybe worth a thousand words, but a video is worth an entire user manual.

Here's how to use Google Maps to plan transit trips.

Google Transit's new look

Google Transit is sporting a new look. Click on the big image below to go to their site. The other nifty feature Google Transit recently added is the ability to specify light rail stations. Here's an example that worked. Now if Google Transit could get a "feeling lucky" option, I could use this to help the wife. Unfortunately, the wife discovered today the pitfalls of relying on a teenager to deliver her to her bus stop. She missed her bus. Worse, she didn't realize she was late. Had she appreciated why no one was waiting at the bus when the kid delivered her, she and the kid could have driven to a point in the route where they might have caught up with the bus. Instead, the wife ended up at 65th Street waiting for an outbound train. Not a good start to the week.

Between news and opinion

I am an unabashed fan of Google. The people who work there keep coming up with ways to make information gathering easier. One Google product I use is Google Alerts. As Google explains, "Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic."

One of my standing queries is the phrase "Sacramento Regional Transit."

Google Alerts, like Google Transit, is a beta service, which means it is still in the testing stages. Certain features are lacking. Google Transit, for instance, needs a "feeling lucky" option to allow it to see Sacramento Regional Transit's wishful thinking that masquerades as transit scheduling. Google Alerts, on the other hand, needs an "ignore that" option.

The most recent Google Alert draws attention to "Disappearing Buses, Disappearing Trains, Is It a Magic Act?" which turns out to be a "News" article in the Sacramento Union.

When I first moved to Northern California in 1978, the Sacramento Union was the oldest daily in Sacramento, proud to have once employed Mark Twain. I was working in Stockton at the time, and I enjoyed watching from afar the benefits Sacramento enjoyed from having two competing daily newspapers.

The daily newspaper called the Sacramento Union died on Jan. 14, 1994. A hole in the ground exists today at the Capitol Mall address once occupied by the newspaper's offices. I'm not sure what to call the weekly free-distribution publication that today bears the name The Sacramento Union. It is certainly not a newspaper.

Google Alerts needs an "ignore that" option.

The Internet rocks and Google Transit bubbles

Today, another guy named Anonymous added a comment to one of my posts. He said:

Uh, I seem to recall being able to get around on public transit -- in Sacramento and elsewhere -- long before anybody ever heard of the internet.

This prompted my snide rejoinder:

And at one time you could find streetcars in downtown Sacramento running so often that you didn't need a schedule.

At a minimum today you need the bus schedule book RT sells for a buck. RT's service is so sporadic and uneven -- half-hour service for awhile and then a 45-minute break; bus lines that only run during "peak" periods; bus lines that don't run on the weekend -- that someone who wants to use transit is REQUIRED to plan ahead. The Internet makes that easier.

Allow me to throw the wife under the bus as an example.

After having problems with late or missing buses two days in a row, I spent some time this afternoon trying to map out escape routes for the wife. I can imagine the conversation if I called 321-BUSS and explained that I needed help deciding what the wife should do if the train and bus don't meet.

"Get off the train at the Starfire stop and take the No. 80 bus."

"And if the train is late?"

"Then you will miss your bus."

"Oh."

The obvious escape route is to continue to 65th Street and catch the No. 82, which is the bus I ride home from work. Under the ideal scenario, the wife would get off at Starfire and if the bus did not arrive by the time that the next inbound train arrived, then she would board the train and go to 65th Street.

But, of course, nothing that involves Sacramento Regional Transit scheduling is that easy. The train that matches up at 65th Street with the No. 82 is the same train that is supposed to catch the No. 80. If the wife gets off to wait and the bus doesn't arrive, she might as well wait for the next bus, a No. 84, that runs a half-hour after the No. 80.

After consulting RT's infoweb.sacrt.com, I decided the wife is going to have to decide each day whether to get off at Starfire or continue to 65th. If the train is on time, she can play Russian Roulette with the No. 80 -- bus arrives on time, empty chamber; bus arrives late, misfire; bus never arrives at all, bang!

If she knows the train is running late -- or she tires of playing the No. 80 game -- then she can just stay on the train. She'll get home a half-hour later than if she made her No. 80 connection, but she'll get a ride all the way to her front door.

Today, the wife watched traffic on Folsom Boulevard as the train approached Starfire, looking for the bus. The train was running six minutes late, which meant that if the bus was on time, it would have already driven past the station. But as she looked west on Folsom she could see a bus approaching. She got off the train and was able to catch the bus.

Tomorrow? Who knows.

* * *

Three cheers to the Google Transit guys and gals for restoring the next-stop bubbles to the Google maps. If you click on a bus stop icon now, you will see a bubble that shows the next two departures for each bus using the stop. As I have mentioned before, RT's trip planner offers the same information, but Google's map interface is unbeatable.

Feeling lucky with Google Transit

They call it beginner's luck for a reason. You can't count on it over the long run -- or even over the course of a single week. Eventually your luck turns.

The wife made four trips to work and four trips home using Sacramento Regional Transit last week. On one trip to work, the bus connecting with the train was late enough that the wife had to run to catch the train. On one trip home, the bus connecting at Mather missed the train the wife needed to catch in order to meet her bus at Watt. As a result, she had an extra 20-minute wait at Watt for the next bus.

The other day I chided Google Transit for not being able to correctly identify transit options for the wife. Now I wonder if perhaps Google just has higher standards for what qualifies as a realistic transit option. Yes, Google's option of walking across eight lanes of freeway traffic is problematic, but a 25 percent failure rate on making connections is equally troublesome. Passengers of Sacramento Regional Transit shouldn't have to rely on luck to make connections. Unfortunately, RT's skimpy service leaves little choice.

There are things that RT could do to reduce the problem. For instance, both Google Transit and RT agree that in the morning the bus the wife takes must meet the outbound Gold Line light rail line that follows Folsom Boulevard on its way to Rancho Cordova. But only Google Transit appreciates that the wife should get off the bus across from the Starfire station. RT instead insists that she ride to the end of the line at the Watt/Manlove station.

According to the RT's schedule data, it takes the bus six minutes to get from the Norcade Circle stop across from the Starfire light rail station to the bus stop at the Watt/Manlove park-and-ride lot. That's an important six minutes if the bus is running late, as my wife learned on the morning she had to run to catch the train.

I agree with Gabby, who commented on the earlier post, "I find myself using the Google Transit route planner far more often than the RT one. For me it is far more user friendly and I like to see the map of where I'm going."

Since it is just not imaginable that RT could adopt Google's mapping technology to its Infoweb site, then the obvious solution would be for Google Transit to lower its standards. What is needed is an "I'm Feeling Lucky" link similar to Google's basic search site. Click on the "I'm Feeling Lucky" and Google Transit could abandon its rules for what counts as a realistic option and offer the equivalent of RT's wishful thinking.

Of course, I could always wish that the four buses the wife relies on -- Nos. 80, 84, 73, 74 -- ran more often than once an hour. Make those half-hour buses and suddenly the wife would have the equivalent of 15-minute service, which would more easily match the 15-minute light rail service.

Maybe I'll have the wife ask. Anonymous RT bus bench orderers seem more willing to listen to her.

The lucky lady

The call came about 5:40 p.m. It was the wife. She was breathless from the combination of walking and talking, but between gasps she managed to explain that she had decided to walk a longer, alternate way and meet her bus coming down a different street.

"I know it goes down this street," she said. "Well, I know it goes near here."

She was approaching the intersection of Disk and Data in Rancho Cordova, she explained. I looked at Google Maps and found the location. Zooming in, I located the bus stops. There wasn't one at that intersection going in the direction she wanted. She would have to walk up Data back to White Rock Road, essentially making a big U and circling back to the stop she usually used.

Once upon a time, I could click on the bus stop icon and up would pop the next time a bus was scheduled to stop. If several routes used that stop, each would be displayed. No more. This has been missing from Google Maps and Google Transit for more than a week.

I could tell which bus stopped there. I then took that info to infoweb.sacrt.com and used the "Schedules" link to select the 74 route and determine when the next bus was due.

"You've missed your bus," I told the wife.

"What?" she gasped.

"It's 4:44 and the bus is due at White Rock at 4:44," I explained. "This bus runs only once an hour, so you'll have to cross White Rock and wait for the next No. 73."

"What?" she gasped.

"You are going to have to walk to ... "

"Hold on," she said and then for several seconds I heard the sound of rustling clothing and wind.

"Made it," she said.

"What?" I asked.

"The bus," she said. "It was turning onto to Data and I ran and made it in time."

The luck continues.

It was only after this that I remembered that RT's Infoweb offers "next bus" information. The problem is that you have to know the bus stop number and finding that when you are not standing next to the bus stop requires several extra steps.

Oh, well. Maybe Google Transit will bring back the "next stop" feature to the bus icons.

* * *

The wife's postscript: She wants a bus stop or two added somewhere on Data Drive near Disk. After all, she points out, there’s a whole new housing and retail development there, with stores open and homes occupied. Why isn’t there a stop there?

Google Transit vs. RT's Infoweb

In newspapers across the wide expanse of America readers awoke to news today that stubborn belly fat in middle age can triple the threat of dementia in old age. Again, Google Transit comes to the rescue.

Ever since I started planning for the adventure of getting the wife to leave her car at home and take transit to work, I've had a gut feeling that something more than bus routes and train connections was governing Google Transit's algorithm for mapping point-to-point transit options.

This something is the difference between getting from Point A to Point B the innovative Google Transit way or going there with the suspiciously self-serving Sacramento Regional Transit way.

Pick up these images: In the one hand, young, creative techno wizards at a company that proudly proclaims "You can make money without doing evil." In the other hand, see middle-aged transit operators and bureaucrats, many of whom, we learned today, are at risk for dementia in old age.

Now, put the images down and go your computer and open up your Web browser. Create two Web-browsing windows. In one, go to www.google.com/transit. In the other, go infoweb.sacrt.com.

In the Google window, put Watt & Whitney, Sacramento as the start address and White Rock Rd & Prospect Park Dr, Rancho Cordova as the end address. Set the departure time to 7:20 a.m. (Any weekday will do.) Click "Get Directions" and then select either of the two "Did you mean" links to get Google Transit's suggested transit options.

In the Regional Transit Trip Planning window, put Watt & Whitney in the "I'm starting from ..." line and White Rock Rd & Prospect Park Dr in the "I am going to ..." line. Specify 7:20 a.m. for the departure time. Click on "Get trip plan" and then select WHITE ROCK RD @ PROSPECT PARK DR, RANCHO CORDOVA and again click "Get trip plan."

Now compare the suggested routes.

Sacramento Regional Transit suggests catching the No. 84 bus, and transferring to the outbound light rail train. RT says to get off at Mather Field station and board a No. 74 bus for the trip to the destination.

Google Transit suggests the same No. 84 bus to light rail. But here is where the two algorithms for mapping point-to-point transit options depart. Instead of getting off at Mather Field, Google suggests continuing on to the Cordova Town Center. From there, the young, creative techno wizards at a company that proudly proclaims "You can make money without doing evil" suggest a walk of about 16 minutes. It will do you good, lower your risk of dementia, make you attractive.

Of course, the middle-aged transit operators and bureaucrats, many of whom are at risk for dementia in old age, will point out that you won't live long enough to enjoy your dementia-free old age if you take Google's suggestion. That leisurely 16-minute walk to your destination includes a brisk dash across Highway 50. In other words, it can't be done. Certainly you can't walk from light rail to White Rock Road and Prospect Park Drive in 16 minutes.

An algorithm, according to the Wikipedia definition, is a type of effective method in which a definite list of well-defined instructions for completing a task, when given an initial state, will proceed through a well-defined series of successive states, eventually terminating in an end-state.

Everyone is working off the same basic data. Perhaps Google thinks it is foolish to throw away that extra $2 that it costs to make a two-transfer trip on Regional Transit. Perhaps Regional Transit really believes that offering routes with just four minutes between transfers is a realistic option and not just wishful thinking.

For a middle-aged man working on reducing his risk of dementia in his rapidly approaching old age, it's all a mystery.

So far the wife has avoided RT's two-transfer penalty by buying a $5 all-day pass. In three trips using RT's suggested schedule of buses and trains, she has only once had to run to make a connection. Perhaps her beginner's luck will hold.

Wishful thinking

Sometimes the truth hurts. Or it is at least inconvenient. I was checking to see if I could get from midtown to a location in Oak Park just off Broadway on the bus. Piece of cake, said Google Transit.

But you will be throwing money away.


I am not going to suggest that Google Transit modify its programming for the convenience of fanatical transit advocates who want to ignore, or at least downplay, any trivial, inconsequential details that might detract from the glorious truth of transit's enduring value.

I am not going to suggest that when the program multiplies the distance times the IRS-allowed auto mileage expense, that it then check that sum against the fare. Shame on me for even imagining that when the fare is more than the cost of driving, that the program cough and knock that piece of superfluous parenthetical data on the floor, never to be missed.

No, it would be wrong to suggest that.

* * *

And in another example of wishful thinking, I checked the same destination and arrival time with Sacramento Regional Transit's online wizard at infoweb.sacrt.com and discovered that RT offered a shorter, more convenient route to my destination.

Where Google Transit suggested I walk four minutes and then take two buses for a 22-minute trip, infoweb suggested I just catch light rail to 29th Street and hop on the No. 68 or 67, which both eventually go down the portion of Broadway near my destination. Total travel time: 10 or 12 minutes, depending on when I left.

When I checked the details of RT's suggestion I think I figured out why Google didn't offer that choice. The train is scheduled to get to 29th Street just three minutes before the bus is scheduled to leave.

The chance of that happening? Not something I would want to bet my plans on.

This does raise an interesting idea. While I will agree that trains can't be expected to wait for buses to make connections, what's to prevent buses from waiting for trains?

Why not have the bus departure at bus transit centers set to the arrival of a specific train (plus a couple of minutes for people to walk to it)? Sure, that would delay the bus departure several minutes on occasion, but not always.

Promising that the bus will meet the train would be a nice piece of customer service that wouldn't cost a penny to implement.

Don't mind me. Just wishful thinking out loud.

I love Google Transit and its developers!

The Derek at My 'Not' so Ordinary Day alerted me today to a cool new feature at Google Transit, the world's absolutely best, most wonderful, innovative new concept in helping people get around on transit. And, best of all, get around on transit in Sacramento using Sacramento Regional Transit.

Here's a screen shot of what's new:
Instant gratification for taking the bus! Sure, it's $2.25 for the bus, but it would cost $4.85 to make the same trip in a car.

When you think about it, this is the sort of "easy" thing that you can do once you get the basic information. Google already knows the distance of the trip. All it needs to do is multiply that by the per-mile cost of owning a car.

As Google Transit explains:

How do you estimate the cost of driving in the US?

Cost of driving is based on the average mileage for the shortest route between your start and end addresses, multiplied by the cost per mile that the IRS allows businesses to deduct.

According to the IRS, these rates "are based on an annual study of the fixed and variable costs of operating an automobile." Runzheimer International, an independent contractor, conducted the study for the IRS. However, this is only an estimate and doesn't consider tolls, parking fees, or variations in gas mileage for different types of cars.

Simply too cool!

Three cheers for RT's tech guys

I subscribe to a mailing list that discusses Google Transit, and this message arrived today:

Dear All,
I don't know where to post this so I am posting it here. I use DART (Dallas Area Rapid Transit). My trip requires me to transfer at various stations. Due to variation in schedule and traffic condition, I find myself waiting more than 15 mins at times.

I am thinking of making an application which can display route timings for a specified route only. This can run in a mobile phone and alert me about the next bus schedule. I want some help. Is there a way I can query for route information using google transit website?

[snip]

Joe Hughes (no relation) replied:

You're in luck! DART is one of the agencies that's taken the lead in making its raw schedule data available to the public for developers like you to use; the DART feed is available here: http://www.dart.org/transitdata/

[snip]

As an aside, I'm happy to report that Sacramento RT and Orange County Transportation Authority recently joined the set of agencies that are making their feeds available for developer use: http://code.google.com/p/googletransitdatafeed/wiki/PublicFeeds

I am very happy to hear that Sacramento Regional Transit is making its route information available to developers who create the sorts of applications that will make riding transit even more inviting.

Of course, the voices of darkness whisper in my ear about the dismal service, the declining ridership and the general bad rep that RT has in the community. But the light of transitarian optimism still shines, however, dimly. Pollyanna lives!

Google Maps and Google Transit all in one

So I was wandering around Google Maps, minding my own business. Well, actually I was looking for a business that recycles computer printers and monitors. One location was Fulton and Arden Way and I wanted to see if I recognized the location.

I'm looking at the hybrid map -- the aerial photo with the street names overlayed -- and I notice little blue bus stop icons.

Huh? Bus stop icons?

OK. This is cool.

Now, I wouldn't take the icons literally. The northbound stop on Fulton isn't really in the center of the street. And the icons don't work at all resolutions. If you get too close to the ground or too far away they disappear.

But the real magic comes when you click on one of the icons. Up pops a list of the next time a bus is scheduled to depart this location.

This is real cool.

So I then went to Watt and El Camino to see what the map can do with a stop served by more than one bus. And, sure enough, when you click on the icon you get the times for all of the buses that stop there.

You can even do the same thing with light rail stops. Here's the 23rd Street stop on the inbound side.


Below is an animated image showing how Google Maps and Google Transit illustrate the 65th Street transit center bus stop.

This, of course, only works if you are on the corner with your wireless PDA or in a nearby office wondering about the bus schedule. For trip planning, go to google.com/transit. Enter the starting address (2100 Q -- you don't need street or avenue) or intersection (21 & Q format) and sacramento (or Fair Oaks, etc.) and the destination address and city. You can set the arrival or departure time. The default is departing soon after the current time.

Assuming all went well and Google Transit found the addresses, you'll see several options, including a handy link to find out how to drive to the same location.

For my comparison of Sacramento Regional Transit's Web scheduling service and Google Transit, see this post.

Between good and better trip planners

When I first used Sacramento Regional Transit's online trip planner at infoweb.sacrt.com I thought I had found the perfect tool for getting the most out of RT's service. This was certainly more useful than sitting on hold for several minutes and then discussing your options with a 321-BUSS person.

And then Google launched its Google Transit service and added Sacramento's routes. The differences are noticeable.

Here's a for instance: I wanted to visit the Vedanta Society of Sacramento garden on Saturday afternoon.

Infoweb's answer: Give up, no way, is that on this planet?

The actual wording was:

I'm having trouble planning your trip. This is due to one of the following reasons... 1. Your origin or destination are not within .4 mile of a transit stop, or they are outside of our service area. If you are within our service area, try using a nearby Landmark or major intersection which is more likely to have a stop nearby. If you are outside our service area, please consider traveling to/from one of our Light Rail stations (listed in Landmarks). 2. There is no service on the day or at the time you've requested. Please try a different date or time.

Google, on the other hand, suggested a nice fall afternoon walk might be in order.

OK. So maybe a walk that Google estimates would take about 45 minutes is so long as to be the same outcome as RT suggested: You can't get there from here. But at least Google's trip planner gave an option that allowed the person taking the trip to understand why it might not be doable.

At the very least, the infoweb.sacrt.com web site should allow users to set the acceptable walking distance. The 0.4 mile limit may be necessary for elderly passengers, but healthy middle-age men should be expected to walk a mile without discomfort. Besides, with RT's spotty coverage in suburban areas, the 0.4 walking limit makes RT service look worse than it is, especially when dealing with weekend service outside downtown.

Now when I was planning with this I was willing to give RT's service a pass. But then I checked whether it would be possible to make the same trip during a weekday afternoon when RT has its entire fleet on the streets. The outcome was a big surprise.

I asked about leaving Edison and Eastern and heading for 1337 Mission Ave. at 2:35 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 5. RT insisted it still couldn't be done.



And then I asked Google Transit about the same departure time and addresses and got these three options:

There's no walking involved. Sure it's not exactly a quick trip, but if that's the criteria, little that RT offers will be acceptable. Why are these options not offered by RT's trip planner?

Real-time transit info

I've been following some fascinating ideas over in the Google Group discussing Google's new transit mapping service. A guy in Lawrence, Kansas, has an intriguing idea about how to marry microtargeted advertising and transit.

"When we pitched this we did it as a vendor owned system. i.e. the [transit agency] gets a tracking system, we get a digital, location-based advertising platform. This means that we get to control the large LCD displays on the outside of the vehicles as well as smaller displays on the inside. ... The goal is to be able to provide a reliable broadband service on the buses in addition to providing location services and route planning."

This is cool.

As the bus approaches, say, Target, the LCDs on the outside of the bus and inside announce the specials of the day. It is like having a rolling billboard that reaches people immediately outside the store, which should be very attractive to merchants.

Meanwhile at the bus stop, a sign connected to the same system announces when the bus will arrive.

RT will have GPS tracking on the next group of new buses, but that doesn't do anything for the older coches.

RT is testing a sign system that could be used to alert riders about disruptions in service. Unfortunately, the signs they have put up at a handful of light rail stations are so tiny as to be useless. At 16th Street, the sign is near the boarding area for Meadowview and Folsom trains. Across two tracks and a half-block away, where people wait for Sacramento Valley Station and Watt trains, the sign can't be read. But even if the signs were larger and more numerous, the system won't be able to tell RT customers when the next bus or train will come along because, without the GPS systems, RT doesn't know where the buses and trains are.

What's especially attractive about Lawrence, Kansas, idea is that the transit agency doesn't have to shell out any money. The people selling the advertising cover the district's equipment cost.

The future for transit requires that people choose to use it. Real-time scheduling info at stations would bring more people onto buses and light rail.

Google Transit comes to Sacramento

Above is a screen capture of what Google's interface with Sacramento Regional Transit's on-line trip planning data produces. This service went live Monday. It is still in the testing stages, but it is fully functional.

Go to google.com/transit, click on Sacramento, enter a starting address and a destination. It is just like using Google Maps. You can even click between the transit option and the route if you are driving.

The difference between RT's infoweb.sacrt.com and Google Transit is the difference between the original, text-only computer adventure cames and the modern interactive software.

This is going to be my first choice for trip planning.

The famous Transitarian Diet

Will wealth follow fame?

Again, the Redwire search engine at News10.net proves its value. Where else could one expect the one word search request -- diet -- to return the answer: "Transitarian Diet."



Really, can there be anything cooler than that?

Of course, this fine search engine alone identifies RTRider as the only blog worth listening to on the subject of whale and even the topic of singer.

And, no, I'm not related to anyone working with PlanetDiscover, which apparently is the source of this wealth of information. I have no idea why they like this blog so much. But, heh, "Thank you!"

How Long Will It Take To Teach A Whale Singer?

Under the category How Long Will It Take To Train A Singer, I find that News10 considers RTRider to be the preeminent blogger on the topic of the whales who visited in May. To see a demonstration, try this search.

If you click on the "More: Blogs" you get 33 different links to my "A whale of a trout fishing story" and then two links to posts to Sacramento Metroblogging.

Every day I get at least one visitor looking for a whale of a trout fishing story. I hope they are as happy as the Googlers looking for How Long Will It Take To Train A Singer.

How long will it take to train a singer?

How long will it take to train a singer? It's a question that hadn't occurred to me, but according to my visitor log, that was exactly what someone in Toronto who subscribes to Bell Canada's DSL service asked Google.

Much to my surprise, it appears that RT Rider, the preeminent authority of transitarian thought, is the No. 2 place to find the answer. Wow!


Of course I do know something about how long it will take on the train for a rap singer to provoke open revolt among passengers. See here and, to a lesser degree, here. And, once this post has been indexed by Google, I may endear myself to even more wayward Googlers who wish to know how long it will take to train a singer.

This reminds of Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America, which was often mistaken for a book about Trout Fishing in America. I think I'll make that my next book to read after I finish "The Crisis of the Old Order / The Age of Roosevelt, 1919-1933" by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.