I’ve been doing a fair amount of traveling recently, and while the iPhone is great at letting me find my way about unfamiliar city streets, the Maps program is primarily designed for traveling in personal wheeled conveyances around the streets, and not so much for walking or—and this is key—public transportation. So here’s a couple of additional tips for taking advantage of the iPhone’s capabilities in order to get around town.
If your trying to navigate the Big Apple, the subway system is indispensable. Unfortunately, to an out-of-towner like myself it also happens to be often incomprehensible. Designer Khoi Vinh has come up with a solution: turn the MTA system’s map into a series of images which you can then sync with your iPhone. Then you can easily flip through the map to avoid ending up in Staten Island when you wanted Queens. And, as you’d expect from a designer of Vinh’s caliber, the maps are easy to use, laid out as overlapping tiles that makes it easy to switch back and forth without losing your place.
Outside of the Big Apple, you have to rely largely on the kindness of municipal transit authorities’ websites, unless you happen to be visiting a city that’s supported by Google’s beta Transit site. Just type in your location and destination, and it’ll give you the easiest route to get there via public transportation. While the map doesn’t display on the iPhone, it’ll still give you the text directions, which are plenty handy. And best of all, the site is pretty low complexity, meaning it loads quickly, even on EDGE.
Got other travel tips for the iPhone? Post a comment below.
Your link to Google Transit is broken. Need to remove the final / to get it to work.
If you haven't seen Metro (http://nanika.net/Metro/), the free public transportation guide for over 350 cities around the world you are really missing something. One of the reasons I am waiting to get my iPhone is that I need to keep using Metro for my travels.
This is an amazing service that is updated constantly.
I have it installed on my Palm. But it works on many different platforms. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it will owrk on the iPhone in the not too distant future.
If you're in the San Francisco Bay Area, there's a nice collection of transportation tools for Muni, Bart, CalTrain, and trip planning under the Tools/Transportation section of www.yeahnototally.com
During my last trip to the Big Apple, http://www.hopstop.com/?city=newyork was a big help. You can choose to use subway only, alternatively include bus transportation or even let the system give you the best way for just walking. The service is also available for other cities.
The NYC subway doesn't actually _go_ to Staten Island, but the iPhone MTA map might save folks from going to Queens when they wanted Brooklyn.