Many more Amtrak services on Google Transit
Many more Amtrak services are now included in the the transit trip planner in Google Maps. Thank you to Tom West and “orulz”, who commented on my Coast Starlight post and notified readers of the newly available services.
It’s now possible to plan a transit trip across the United States using Google Maps. Including intercity services in the trip planner connects all the isolated service areas where it was possible to plan trips before. It’s now possible to plan trips between many more points in the country and receive directions across local and intercity services.
Tom West inventories the services included:
It looks like many of Amtrak’s servcies are now on Google including the Californian Zephyr, Southwest Chief, Acela Express, Northeast Regional services, Adirondack, Downeaster, Keystone, Cascades, Vermonter, Auto Train, Carolinian, Capitol Ltd., Wolverine, Pere Marquette, Carbondale, Carl Sandburg and Capitol Corridor.
Already in were the Empire Service, Ethan Allen Express, Hiawatha Service, Pacific Surfliner and San Joaquin. You mentioned the Coast Starlight.
The ones I found missing were the Maple Leaf (odd, given the Empire Service is), Empire Builder, Sunset Limited, Atlantic Coast services, Cardinal/Hoosier State, Pennsylvanian, Lake Shore Limited, City of New Orleans, Texas Eagle, Heartland Flyer and Idaho/Washington services.
Overall, looks like about half Amtrak’s sevvices are now on Google.
It looks as if the Amtrak GTFS feed does not include shapes.txt for route alignments, so travel lines are drawn stop-to-stop. Also, as far as I know the Amtrak GTFS has not been publicly released. GTFS Data Exchange shows an unofficial feed for Amtrak.
I hope someday there is really good full coverage. It’s still a but annoying that I can’t just start from my town and get directions with Google Transit. I have to search from the next biggest city 50 miles away. It would be great if it could incorporate bus lines as well.
This is awesome! Thanks for passing the information along.
Odd that they don’t have the Lakeshore Limited in there yet. Right now, a trip from CA to NY is routed via the Capitol Limited to DC, then Acela northbound.
I’d also love to see an “Avoid Acela” option- she’s not a cheap train.
Another update: they now have all train routes in except the Sunset Limited and the Maple Leaf. (Annoyingly, VAI doesn’t include the latter either – so asking to go from Toronto to New York takes you via Montreal!)
Connecting bus services appear to be absent.
Also, parts of the Coast Starlight appeat to be absent.
I mean Cascades.