I was recently browsing ‘Google Labs’ - where you can test some of Google’s latest online applications and services - and fell upon Google China Bus Search （谷歌公交搜索）. This is just the thing I have been looking for! Anybody who lives in Beijing knows just how many bus routes there are in the city and how confusing it can be to get from one place to another without taking a taxi or the metro. However, things have now got much much easier. Google China Bus Search allows you to search bus routes in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, and Nanjing. You tell Google where you are setting off from and where you want to get to and the rest is all done for you.
Google gives you all the possible bus routes (sorted by distance) to get to your location and you can also view the journey on a map. Not only does it work out changes for you but also tells you how to get from where you are to the stop you need to be at and how to get from the end bus stop to your ultimate destination (on foot).
Even better, you can share the route with your friends via Gmail and even send the route to your mobile phone for free.
In fact, there were a few sites that already provided this feature to Beijingers, notably:
http://beijing.8684.cn/
http://map.baidu.com/
However neither of these were particularly innovative or easy to use.
You can have a sneak peak at a test route below:
Jono
