Google Transit trip planning in UK, Switzerland and Italy

Google announced the launch of Google Transit trip planner in Europe. Now you can plan your entire journey using public transportation. So far Google has information for the following places and transport companies:

Read more1 - Traveline South East, UK

"The UK's No 1 website for impartial information on planning your journey, by bus, coach or train... or any combination of the three!"

Google Transit can plan trips on the following agencies in this area: Traveline Southeast, including national data for long-distance coach services.

2 - SBB, Switzerland (train, ferries and long distance bus coverage)

3 - VBZ, Zurich, Switzerland

4 - Turin, Italy (Gruppo Torinese Trasporti)

www.5t.torino.it/5t/en/percorsi

5 - Florence, Italy (ATAF&Linea, AMV, ACV)

www.provincia.fi.it/mobilita/

www.ataf.net/travelPlan/calcolapercorso

You can try it yourself: type your start and end address in the "get directions" boxes. The default results are driving directions, but in the areas that Google has transit routing coverage, you can simply click on the "Take Public Transit" link.

Google believes this is an important step in encouraging people to use public transit. Google is hoping folks will decide to leave the car at home if they can easily discover a transit stop next to a business as they're searching for it, or if they realise it's easy to take a train as they plot their journey from point A to point B. Google is always looking to improve the coverage and work with more partners and they will keep you posted as more places and transport companies are added.

How to provide transit data to Google Transit Trip Planner

Recently we made a plan for a trip across the Europe, Lisbon - Helsinki. The aim was to see which of the schedules of the transit agencies might be integrated to increase the Google database, giving to the users a chance to check which would be the cheapest, probably fastest and most environmentally friendliest trip.

Lisbon – Helsinki trip plan
Start: Rotunda da Expo 98; Lisbon, Portugal
End: Mannerheimintie ; Helsinki, Finland
Travel: 4,069 km – about 1 day 20 hours (by car)

Transporlis is a multimodal information system of the metropolitan area of Lisbon.

It is a system that integrates the main transport operators of the metropolitan area of Lisbon, and that allows to optimize the use of their transports in function of the schedules of each company. It also integrates the flight schedules of the airport of Lisbon.

YTV door-to-door Journey Planner gives you advice on the best public transport connection to your destination within the Helsinki region.

The principal duties of the Helsinki Metropolitan Area Council (YTV) comprise transport system planning, regional public transport provision, waste management and air quality management for its four member municipalities (Helsinki, Espoo, Kauniainen and Vantaa).

We can say that the world integration of the public transit schedules (in its different transport modes) will surely be a great challenge . Once achieved, this previous example would be highly simplified, improving the schedule-based service. IT and modern real-time logistics are crucial keys for the design of future public transport.

So, to increase the integration it's necessary that the agencies have a public transportation data for their cities, and get it included in the Google Transit Trip Planner. The Google Transit Feed Specification describes how to provide transit data in a format that Google Transit Trip Planner can use, i.e. how a public agency that oversees public transportation can submit a feed to Google Transit Trip Planner.

28 Hours in Jyväskylä

Jyväskylä is a city located in central Finland, about 147 km from Tampere and 270 km from Helsinki, near the lakes Päijänne and Keitele. It is the center of the Jyväskylä Region. At the end of 2004, Jyväskylä city had a population of 83,582, while the Region of Jyväskylä had 163,420 inhabitants.

Read moreJyväskylä is known as a city of schools, the Athens of Finland, and is also famous for its many buildings designed by Alvar Aalto and for hosting the Rally Finland, which is part of the World Rally Championship. The city is home of the annual Jyväskylä Arts Festival.

The webmaster Neo Kekkonen created a video (you can download the HD version with 5-channel surround sound AVI-video from its site) that gives us to know its city in a fantastic way .Even if one doesn't have plans to visit or to live in the city it's worthwhile to see this 28 hours in Jyväskylä.

Links:
neokoo.net
ourmedia.org

Google establishes New office in Portugal

Google establishes in Lisbon to attract national companies. Google will concentrate on the online publicity, attracting the portuguese companies to invest.

Google Portugal team has finally arrived to Portugal. Good news for a country that seeks an economic growth based on investments in new technologies.

Read more
It almost passed one year since a European delegation of Google came to Portugal to prospect the market, shaking the technological sector and waiving with the hypothesis of doing purchases among the most technologically attempting ones.


But everything ended the best way: Google named a representative, Paulo Barreto, who worked from Spain until reaching the right moment for investing in Portugal.

“We want the companies know that we are here”, explains Paulo Barreto in an exclusive interview to Diário Económico, some hours before receiving several dozens of potential customers in the heart of Lisbon.

Among the invited companies is PT, holding company of the largest Google rival in Portugal, the portal Sapo. “It is an event to present the office”, Paulo Barreto continues, nothing annoyed with the allusion to the competition between Sapo and Google.

What Google Portugal wants from now on , is to affirm in the online publicity market and to leave other wars for later. The small team of the structure, composed exclusively by portuguese professionals , was recruited along six months with the objective of creating one specialists team. Some came directly from the European headquarters of Google, in Dublin.

Paulo Barreto's mission will be now to lead his sales office totally turned for the online publicity , that just represents in Portugal “3% to 4% of the total of the advertising investment” .

According to Barreto, Google can help the internationalizing of the portuguese companies. He's convinced that this publicity platform is actually the marketing form with largest return. The used system is the well-known AdWords.

Some customers of the system are, for example, Impresa, RTP and Cofina. However, Google believes that it has potential for much more.

The Portuguese office is integrated in Google EMEA (area 3), together with Spain, Italy and France.

Google has 2.500 collaborators in Europe and twelve R&D offices, spread by countries like United Kingdom, Israel and Switzerland, among others. Portugal won't be contemplated , for a while.

Links:

diarioeconomico.sapo.pt

www.jornaldenegocios.pt

The Arctic Quandry -- What Happens When The Ice Melts?

There’s no need to rehash what we already know. The Arctic is melting. It’s a fact that we are going to have to come to grips with. Shipping lanes are being changed, animals and natives are being displaced, and ice is disappearing(...)
So it’s no surprise to see five of the nations likely to be hardest hit up north — Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway and Iceland — come together and issue a cry for help.

Full text: greenoptions.com

Greenpeace: Neste palm-based biodiesel not so green

A full-page advertisement in Tuesday's Helsingin Sanomat by Neste Oil (which perhaps wants to be to biodiesel what Nokia is to mobile phones) promoting its biodiesel as an environmentally friendly option was immediately disputed by Greenpeace. According to the page advertisement, biodiesel reduces emissions of greenhouse gases.
Read more

Stockholm, Sweden - Sweden's Greenpeace organisation held a demonstration on Tuesday at the headquarters of the Swedish oil company OKQ8 to protest plans to buy bio diesel fuel produced by Neste Oil using tropical palm oil as the raw material.

Photo: Greenpeace / Ludvig Tillman

WATCH THE VIDEO

Harri Lammi of the Finnish section of Greenpeace:

"The production of palm oil is one of the greatest causes of deforestation in Southeast Asia. Neste Oil says that it imports the oil from Malaysia, but the company that they use plans to expand to Indonesia, where 80 per cent of deforestation stems from the production of palm oil"
Greenpeace calls the oil a "rain forest fuel", and says that the production of its raw material, palm oil, increases greenhouse gas emissions, rather than reducing them.

Jarmo Honkamaa of Neste Oil says that the palm oil comes from Malaysia from monitored plantations. The subcontractor is a company called IOI.

"Our palm oil can be traced back to the plantations. The plantations have been examined by a foreign company, and they have made a report. We didn't get top marks on every aspect, but there are no great causes for concern"

Honkamaa says that Neste Oil has been actively developing a certification system for sustainable palm oil production, called the Roundtable of Sustainable Palm Oil, or RSPO.
"We will use certified palm oil as soon as possible, and IOI is also committed to this"

The certification system is not yet in use, and Lammi of Greenpeace says that Neste cannot claim in its advertising that a single drop of the palm oil that it uses is extracted without damage to the rain forests.

"It seems unlikely that certification would have any significance, because such a small proportion of producers will be a part of it"

"If demand increases, there will be more producers, and when the oil brings a good price, it will be produced in an unethical manner"

Following protests by Greenpeace, the Swedish filling station chain OKQ8 announced that it would cancel its plans to market biodiesel fuel produced by Neste Oil.

Links
Greenpeace: Neste palm oil-based biodiesel not so green
Swedish filling station chain cancels deal with Neste

Neste Oil press release: Neste Oil aims to become the world´s leading biodiesel producer

www.greenpeace.org/finland/fi/mediakeskus/
www.greenpeace.org/sweden/press/

Greenpeace Opposing Neste Palm-Based Biodiesel

Biofuel buses introduced in Helsinki public transport 28.08.2007

Finnish oil company Neste to invest billions in biodiesel production 28.09.2006

Every second bus in Helsinki may soon run on second-generation biodiesel 20.04.06