FLEET-FOOT Fridays: Meta-Travel Searches--Many Are Clicked; Few Are Useful

The best 'search-of-searches' travel planners--sometimes called meta-travel planners--allow a search across varying modes of travel, from self-propelled to transit, even when offered by unaffiliated agencies or companies. So, for example, a search for schedule and fare information from a point on the one side of a city, such as London, New York or Denver, would bring up all of the information required using any and all modes (rather than just buses or just rail or just bicycles).

A superb example is London's Journey Planner; this is 'best of breed' when it comes to meta-searches. Not only does it search across travel modes (including bicycling routes to and from stops or stations), it also lays out the travel route via visually, via text and with additional clickable PDF maps for vicinity of each change of line or mode of travel. 

By contrast New York City's trip planner (offered by the transit agency, versus an umbrella group) does not include ferries, bicycling information, nor New Jersey Transit, one of the largest transit provides in the nation. HopStop does a little better, allowing searches across the region, but still allows only one combination-mode search (bus and rail), leaving you to run the same search over for each mode, and then do some combining on your own.

Close on London's heels, the San Francisco Bay Area offers Transit511, which better than the Big Apple's, but still doesn't include bicycles in its travel modes, and requires a complicated check-off of the plethora of transit agencies. Still, it's not bad.  The search outcome is well-presented, with maps for each mode or line change (although it's not as intuitive or user-friendly).