Plan Your Public Transit Route with HopStop
Nick Gonzalez
41 comments »
Google may be environmentally conscious, but they certainly not helping the rest of us get around any greener. Currently, Google’s public transit mapper, Google Transit, only deals with bastions of public transit like Orange County and Duluth Minnesota, leaving those of us in San Francisco, New York and just about everywhere else squinting at bus maps.
Transit planner HopStop, however, takes on these larger metros, providing coverage for Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, New York, Washington D.C., and several cities in New Jersey. For each city, HopStop will plot directions and estimate travel time by foot and public transit (bus / subway) between two or more addresses. It also comes with some other really useful features. You can choose which travel method you would prefer more, walking, busing, subway, or a combination of the three. Also, since you don’t always know the street address of your destination you can pick it from a map.
Aside from directions, HopStop has some nascent local guides and a business directory. And if you don’t like the interface, there’s also a developer API.
NY and London based TechCrunch readers should also check out Greg Brail’s Transit Maps.
Londoners should just use the “official” travel planner at http://journeyplanner.tfl.gov.uk. The maps arent as sexy as Greg Brail’s app, but it includes buses, trains and even boats.
It also allows you to specify which modes of transport you prefer, how far you want to walk (max), gives cycling and walking directions, allows you to specify wheelchair accessible routes, and can show you directions between postcodes, addresses, stations or stops and even places of interest.
Bar the mapping feature (outputs to PDF files for some reason) its the best public transport travel planner I’ve seen…
/Martin
But only on Google can you get directions to go across the street by swimming across the Atlantic Ocean!
link here
Well, maybe they’ll send you a superman cape as well
Really neat service. I’m located in Pittsburgh where our Port Authority service is lackluster at best. The website’s a pain. The maps are a headache.
A lot of people feel my pain. So much so that the Port Authority has come under fire lately for decreasing revenues - and the residual need to eliminate a number of bus routes.
A service that made the process of mapping your route between points A and B would ease a lot of troubles plaguing both the city’s subsidized transit system, and the people who use it. Hope it comes our way soon.
None of the above contain streets for Finland. If anyone needs to take a bus or train in Finland, should go to http://matka.fi, which contains all bus routes and trains, even local lines.
Nick - I am a transit freak… and I can tell you that HopStop is only right about 40-50% of the time. Even in your example, it is not “perfect”. And your example is an easy one.
And I agree with Martin, the Journey Planner from TfL rocks.
Great service. This is of use to so many people in so many cities. Thanks for the post and good luck to those hailing from Finlandia.
http://ThunkDifferent.com
Just checked it out, very detailed and useful indeed.
Make sure to check out http://www.nextbus.com/
Not as flashy, but has a lot of agencies and real-time data on when buses will arrive at their stops.
Those of us in San Francisco need not suffer with paper maps; for quite a while we’ve had this pretty good site:
http://transit.511.org/tripplanner/index.asp
I’ve been using this site for years - I guess even TC falls behind sometimes
Even better is the fact that its mobile browser friendly, so you can easily get directions from your Blackberry, Smartphone, etc.
I live in NY and totally agree with Allan. This site’s only right about 40% of the time. I played with it for several routes and it makes unrealistic recommendations. Transit sites need a social component to them so users can recommend better routes.
In the test route that I tried, the total time was being calculated incorrectly. It said: Take ‘El’ Train for 7.5 minutes. Then it detailed each stop that I would pass in those 7.5 minutes, adding the time it takes between each stop in addition to the 7.5 total minutes. So, my 7.5 minute ride now shows that it takes twice as long (15 minutes) even though I know that is incorrect.
So basically, when calculating total time: don’t add the detailed stops like “Pass Damen 1.4, Pass Montrose 1.2″ into the total time.
Not needed in Boston. We are paying through the nose for a great site: http://mbta.com
I don’t rely too much on maps, but i know friends here in NYC that could benefit from online transit planners. My frustration with NYC transit involves unexpected subway service advisories and interruptions. You never know what you’re going to get on the weekends.
I’m sure there is some RSS feed that gives daily subway advisories.
I use this site in NYC a lot. It rocks! It is also a great platform for delivering hyper-local advertising. Try it. Not many ways to target ads local at this point.
Congratulations Chinedu!! Best of luck!
JP - Here in NYC, Hopstop incorporates service interruptions / changes and I’ve relied on them in the past when things get all out of whack on the weekends.
I’ve been using Hopstop for a few years now and it truly makes my life easier. I don’t know why every site doesn’t link up in some way to its directions service. For example, Zagat’s or CitySearch.
I would have no clue how to get to Corner Bistro in the West Village or to some place like Landmarc in Tribeca if it weren’t for Hopstop.
And the timing is always dead-on. I’m a notorious under-estimator of how long it will take me to meet someone and Hopstop enables me to be on time because I don’t need to do the estimating
I love transit… okay, I’m a little obsessed actually. Especially with the robotic-type voices on subways - ex. “Stand clear of the CLOSING doors, please!” and “Descend a gauche. Please get off the train to your left…”
Anyway, what I think is really neat about HopStop is the 360 photos. Even if the directions aren’t on point 100% of the time, it’s great to be able to visualize your destination with milestones and all. I think that’s an awesome, unique touch.
In San Francisco, 511.org is king of public transit planning. Works great from mobile devices, which, for me, is how it got its most use.
What happened to TC ? We are using Hopstop for the past 2 years. I guess TC is for startups but this is very late news for us anyhow.
clever, but most cities have their own transit planning tools, which I’d trust the accuracy of first. but hopstop does have some interesting bells and whistles, and if they can clean up their directions a bit I like the idea of having transit planning in one place (especially for visiting new cities). expanding internationally would be great - it’s not always easy to pick up a foreign cities subway system.
What a great service. I like public transit but it’s a bit of a nightmare here in the SF bay area. Too many agencies that don’t coordinate their services means I have to look at multiple schedules if I want to get anywhere. This makes it a lot easier.
Thank you for showing me this site.
GJ
http://www.60in3.com
The NYC MTA has its own trip planner available at http://travel.mtanyct.info - I prefer it to Hopstop myself.
HopStop works great on most PDA’s and smartphones, but more often than not, you’ll need to check your route BEFORE you go into the subway…
Good idea, but half-baked - at least in San Francisco. Based on 3 routes which I increasingly tailored towards bus routes, the site has no knowledge yet of bus routes in San Francisco. It only knows about MUNI, street cars, and cable cars.
The site kept telling me to walk to the nearest street or cable car. In other words, useless for now.
I *love* HotStop, and use it daily when I’m in NYC. Best one out there, IMO.
I agree that it is best to use the local sites. I tried it for Chicago and the commute was an hour longer than necessary.
I tried 3 different boston routes and only one was accurate. The MBTA website is surprisingly good and uses a google maps mashup for trip directions. Way better than any city I’ve seen… Still doesn’t compensate for what’s probably the worst run subway system in the US. They need few web designers and more competent bus drivers!
Absolutely useless until it includes time information. I could miss a whole day waiting for the 33 Stanyan. I’ll stick with Nextbus for now.
Madrid also has a trip planner, which works perfectly by the way. It’s @
http://www.ctm-madrid.es/
Cheers
Nice service
I love hopstop in New York, but as a native San Franciscan I’ve been disappointed with the advice it gave. A great service for tourists and newcomers, but locals always know best.
Great idea, but horrendous accuracy. my commute would take me three hours for a half-hour ride if I listened to them.
This is a realy great servie for a place like New York, where everybody seems to prefer the subways to buses or walking. I have been using HopStop for sometime now to get directions for a bus ride or just walk down to my destination instead of taking the train.
However, I found a glitch in HopStop…not sure if it is something to do with my browser…I am unable to type the address…instead I have to resort to clicking on the interactive map, which at times does not give me the right starting or ending point. Has anybody else noticed this glitch or is it just me?
Thanks!
Kamla
Brilliant! They should merge with Yelp.
If you’re hoping for a good commute you’ll wanna live here:http://listafterlist.com/tabid/57/listid/1022//Top+10+Cities+with+the+Best+Commute.aspx
or if you enjoy sitting in traffic for hours, live here (maybe you already do): http://listafterlist.com/tabid.....mmute.aspx
This should be nation wide already …
- what is the hold up?
HopStop is a joke for San Francisco. It only knows about rails transit. Interesting this includes cable car, which costs $5 and is used mostly by tourists. You’ll find it making ridiculous suggestion. Instead of taking a direct bus, it suggest a round about route that uses cable car for a few blocks and then ask you to walk 20 minutes to your real destination.
The transit planner at 511.org on the other hand does an excellent job and find routes and making trip time estimation.
http://transit.511.org/tripplanner/index.asp