October 11, 2005
Announcing DCist Maps
We've written before about D.C.-related Google Maps hacks, including several excellent efforts to represent the Metro system. It looked like so much fun that we decided to give it a shot ourselves.
So today we're happy to announce DCist Maps, our very own Google Maps application. As you can see from the graphic, we've programmed an overlay of the Metro system over Google's map of the region. Our map also lets you plot addresses, find directions and — this is the part we get excited about — makes it easy to create your own Metro-enabled Google Maps, all from within your web browser.
Once you've made a custom map, you can link to it using a simple URL. For example, here's a custom map showing the location of the White House. If you need a custom Google Map for your own organization but don't feel like learning Javascript, it doesn't get much easier than this.
We think this has a lot of potential, and we're going to keep working on it (adding more detailed station exits is the biggest item on our list). But we'd appreciate your help: what features would you like to see? What parts give you trouble? Let us know in the comments.
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Kudos to the folks that made this happen - useful local content!
Awesome ! Applause !
How about a "map of the week" or something with pins for various dc events, concerts, plays, restaurants, etc. that have been posted on that week or that day? That would be very cool.
Suggestion: rather than just the Metro station points, i think you should put the entrance points on there too, maybe with black dots or something. A lot of the stations have a bunch of exits, it would be a lot more helpful for directions and things. The WMATA website has the locations written out, and if you use Arcview GIS software to do this, DC's website has a shapefile here
This map shows DC bars:
http://bardc.com?page=gmap
For some reason, it doesn't work for me when I search some addresses -- it just pulls up the "we don't have map information for this zoom level" and when I zoom out I'm at 0' Longitude/ 0' Latitude.
This is sweet! One suggestion though is to choose a different red or a different orange. The colors you have now are so close in value that it looks in some places (like Metro Center) that the red line forks :)
Andrew: that's exactly what we have in mind for the future. Geocoding all of those station exits is tedious work (and WMATA's location information is worse than you'd think). But eventually we will add this functionality, so that inside each station icon's info bubble will be a "show exits" option that will zoom in and display icons for each elevator and escalator.
It doesn't have the station entrances, but a much cooler program than google maps is google earth. It already has the stations with links to their respective pages that gives the location of entrances, but most can be seen. You can do local search and directions using it as well, but no craiglist overlay... tooo bad. However, unless you have a cache file of the dc area you will want broadband.
Anyway, enough pluggin google earth. Get it free at earth.google.com
Hmmm...works great for me in IE, but in Firefox the lines are just straight up and down. See here:
http://www.visualpointdev.com/dropbox/dcist.jpg
Cameron: That sometimes happens when an incorrect address is entered. We use geocoder.us to turn addresses into lattitude and longitude, so it's out of our hands -- when geocoder knows it can't find an address, we say so. But sometimes it thinks it's found it, when really it's completely wrong (and you end up in the middle of nowhere). Try reformatting the address you're giving it.
Beth: You'd be surprised how hard it is to find a satisfying orange color on the computer (esp. on a map with lots of yellow that shines through the translucent lines). But I will definitely take another shot at it when I package the source code up for distribution.
Jarrod: Google Earth is very cool, but it's a binary application (and Windows-only) rather than a web app, so it's a bit of an apples/oranges situation.
Chris: That's very weird. I did all the development in Firefox, and it works fine for me. What version of FF are you using? And are you on a PC or Mac?
It looks to me like either the stations.xml file didn't load properly (try clearing your cache and refreshing) or there's some serious javascript math problem going on (nonstandard implementation of Math.xxx?). If I can replicate the problem I'll look into it further.
My only suggestion is to use more saturated colors: the yellow line is hard to see in places and the red and orange lines look like the same color -- especially if you're zoomed way in and can only see one of them.
John: unfortunately the transparency of drawn lines is determined by Google, not us. I'll play around with the colors some more tonight, though, and see what I can do. The yellow is definitely hard to see.
That's too bad. I've only toyed around with the Google Maps API a little bit, but from what I've seen, while most of it is great, there's some annoying limitations as well.
Of course, there's always the Yahoo Maps API, which probably doesn't do you much good in this case, but is probably worth looking into for future projects.
Do the colored lines reflect the actual path of the subway? I think it would be cool to see how the path swerves in different parts of the city, especially since the official WMATA map is iconographic and not to scale at all
I like it. The single fact that google didn't have metro stops was the reason I didn't use google maps. Us car-less folk get no love. This is great. Good Job!
Antonio: no, except for the redline bend near Metro Center, the stations are just connected in straight lines. I agree that it'd be interesting to see, but it would degrade performance and probably not be all that useful. Plus, I'm not sure where we would get the data for the underground portions.
I don't know if they still do, but the ADC atlases of the Greater DC area used to plot out where the Metro tunnels actually were on their maps.
Looks like they still do. go here and then click on the "look inside" link just under the cover of the atlas. It's a popup, and only one page, but you can see where the blue, orange and red lines are near the White House.
Interesting. Maybe once we have added the more immediately useful features that we have in mind, we can add an optional overlay that is more faithful to the path of the tracks.
I wonder about all the people who absolutely need to where the entrances and exits to the stations are. Isn't it enough to know where the stations are on g-maps? Come on. Think about it... once you're at the intersection/location of the station, you're going to head there from wherever you starting point is regardless of knowing precisely where the door is. Using spidey senses you'll see an "Entrance" sign and avoid "Exit Only." If, on the other hand, you're leaving the metro station, look for the friendly exit signs. Warning: You may have to cross the street. I bet the DC Mapist person can figure out cooler stuff to do with gmaps than finish tedious work on metro station doorways.
You have the New York Avenue stop on the red line in the wrong location. It is basically at the corner of New York and Florida, NE. The map shows is at Florida and 6th, NE. Should be an easy fix.
I appreciate the sentiment, Greg -- believe me, I'm not looking forward to plotting all of those exits. But I do think it'd come in handy. For one thing, signage inside the stations is frequently pretty poor. Every try to find the elevator at metro center? Whoever thought to make all the signs point at 45 degree angles to the actual directions they represent should be shot.
For another thing, handicapped riders, parents with strollers and bicyclists could really use handy representations of elevator locations. Right now it's a real pain to drag that info out of WMATA's website.
And finally -- it's nice to know exactly where you're going. If someone has an exit in mind, they'll probably be able to use the signs in the station more easily to get to it. So I still think this will be a useful feature to include.
As for more useful features: keep in mind that the "create map" function puts a lot of power in your hands. If there's some custom map you'd like to see, go ahead and make it -- and maybe send us the URL for it. If it's something we think other people would find useful, we'll pretty it up and make it a formal part of the map (as an overlay that can be turned on and off).
Ed: thanks for the help. A lot of these were plotted using somewhat vague descriptions from WMATA's website. I'll try to get to the fix this evening.
Tom: great job on this. Looks really good.
Great job! This feature will be very useful.
Awesome! Any plans for....buses?
E
It's been talked about, but the time it would take is significant. It's not a technical challenge -- it's just a question of entering the routes into the system. If anyone feels like lending us a hand, no experience is required! We could set you up with the tools and instructions and go from there.
You can find the locations of all the Metro's entrances at http://stationmasters.com/System_Map/system_map.html. When you click on a station on their system map, it will show you not only where the exits and elevators are, but also which direction the escalators will have you facing when you get out of the station. This is a nice way to avoid having to walk a block just to find out which way you're facing.