Sunday, January 9, 2011

How to bookmark a google maps transit route

So a common task I have is getting the bus times from one place to another. Local bus websites are usually not so good compared to google maps. It has autocomplete and such helps with that but still it's annoying to pick the start, end, time and transit choice on google maps.

The first thought that comes to mind is to bookmark it. Problem is, it's not so easy. If you just bookmark what you put into google then you would have www.maps.google.com. Following that bookmark would give you blank options.

I managed to work out how to do this the other day so I figured I would share it online.

It's pretty easy -
  1. Set all your options, destination point, start point and transit as mode.
  2. Set time box to "Leave now"
  3. Click on the little "link" link at the top right, it's beside "send" and "print"
  4. Copy the URL in the first textbox that appears
  5. Paste that URL into your address bar
  6. Check the result and if it's good add a bookmark, if not adjust the options and goto step 3
  7. bookmark or favorite it like any other link
I hope this helps, I wasn't sure if this was worth putting online but I guess I can track how many people get here.

TIP: set the first bus/transit stop as your first location if it's bad at calculating your walking time. (I use something like UBC Bus loop 6)

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