The New Big Chicagoland Automobile/Public Transportation Trip Planning Site

By Andrew Peerless in Miscellaneous on Jun 9, 2005 2:00PM

Who knew this was unofficial "Let's Speed Up Your Travel Times Week" in Chicago? First we got new CTA Go Lanes for privileged Chicago Card holders, and now this: transit peeps from the RTA and the Illinois Department of Transportation are joining forces to bring area commuters the fastest way to get from anywhere to anywhere.

Sometime in the next year, Chicagoland commuters will have access to a comprehensive Web site that computes travel times for the entire area, in a delicious soupy combination that falls somewhere between the CTA's online trip planner and Mapquest's driving directions. The site will go beyond stardard directions to include real-time traffic and parking information, monitored by GPS-equipped CTA vehicles, and will use fare calculations to compute not only the fastest, but also the cheapest ways to get where you gotta go. In the beginning, the site will focus only on major expressways and transit routes, but will eventually be expanded to include major city streets such as Milwaukee and Western Avenues.

Because we've got train, bus and car peeps all collaborating on this service, your suggested routes may include combinations of two or more of these types of transit. Chicagoist doesn't actually have a car, so we'll just look forward to the day when the site will be able to tell us what our bus driver's name will be and how many children she has...