MBTA Bus and Google Maps, Mashed Up

It's a funny thing when you tell people they can take the bus from point A to point B in Boston. Most people just laugh. The buses in Boston don't really run on their schedule, though some get close. The problem is that most folks know how to get around using the trains and trolleys. busses simply confound most users in their routes. As they occasionally pass by they display things like "via Broadway" or "via Kenmore" with some indication of destination or origin of the line. But with the layout of the city streets it is sometimes difficult to figure out which Tremont or School Street in the city they will be traveling down, and if you'll actually be able to get to your destination. Thanks to intrepid reader Stuart who sent us to Google Maps Mania to find a new tool on the tubes that gives us a map overlay of the bus routes in Boston. It was cool when we found that we could draw the MBTA train lines onto Google Maps, but now we can find out where the busses run. The site is an experiment in Google Map API and javascript, and it returns an error for us when we browse over in Firefox. Apparently the script is slow – which we find humorously (or ironically) fitting for the MBTA busses. There's room for improvement and Laura (the author) welcomes suggestions. Only routes 1 through 105 are represented thus far. Another Google Map experiment that's got some utility for the masses. We'll take it.

The folks at Google Maps Mania actually waited fro the script to load on a fairly wide angle view of the Boston area and took a screen grab. We haven't, instead we just ripped off their image