One-click subway directions from home on Google Maps?

July 5, 2009 11:21 AM

How can I get one-click public-transit directions from my home to anywhere on Google Maps?

Almost every time I ask Google Maps for directions, I want to take public transit from my home (let's pretend it's 100 Bedford Ave., Brooklyn NY) to the destination. The current workflow for this is:

- Enter "map 555 park ave, ny" or "map fabianes,brooklyn" into Firefox's address bar (since I've assigned the keyword "map" to the Google Maps search form).
- Click the result, then "to here."
- Enter "10" before Google suggests my full address in the dropdown (since I've used it before). Hit down, enter, enter.
- Now I have driving directions. Click "public transit." Done!

How can I compress all of this into one or two steps?

I expect that it's easier to compress a discrete address like 555 Park Ave. than to compress a search like "Sunny's," where there's the extra step of selecting which search result is my desired destination. I'd be satisfied with either a robust solution that starts after I select the destination, or an address-only solution that gives me public transit directions as soon as I type in the right keyword and destination address and hit enter.

posted by NickDouglas to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Best answer: Go to Google Maps, fill in your address for Destination A, leave Destination B blank, select public transit, hit enter. At the top right of the map click link, copy the link, make it a bookmark. Now all you have to do is hit the bookmark, type the destination address (the cursor should start off in this field), and hit enter.
posted by ofthestrait at 11:29 AM on July 5, 2009 [1 favorite]

Here's an example link for 100 Bedford.
posted by ofthestrait at 11:30 AM on July 5, 2009

Best answer:
Try this; create a bookmark with the following link (replacing STARTADDRESS with your starting address), assign a keyword to this, say gmap.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=STARTADDRESS&daddr=%s&hl=en&geocode=&mra=ls&dirflg=r&ttype=dep&noexp=0&noal=0&sort=&tline=&sll=51.536874,-0.101367&sspn=0.012533,0.026758&ie=UTF8&t=h&z=14&start=0

When you assign a keyowrd to a bookmark, any text after the keyword is assigning to the variable %s in the link (above, its &daddr=%s), so typing gmap should specify mapping from your fixed starting address to a variable destination address.

I got this link by searching for directions by public transit in NY, getting the link (top right hand corner dropdown, and replacing the destination I searched for with %s. The link did specify a date and time, I just deleting those, it defaults to current date and time. Possibly a lot of the additional tags are irrelevant as well, try deleting them and see.
posted by Boobus Tuber at 2:59 PM on July 5, 2009 [1 favorite]

So to clarify, once you've filled in your starting address and bookmarked it, typing gmap will give directions from fixed starting address to .
posted by Boobus Tuber at 3:02 PM on July 5, 2009

And again, as triangular brackets are filtered out:

So to clarify, once you've filled in your starting address and bookmarked it, typing gmap [DESTINATIONADDRESS will give directions from fixed starting address to [DESTINATIONADDRESS].
posted by Boobus Tuber at 3:04 PM on July 5, 2009

Response by poster: Thank you both so much! I used Boobus's URL and figured out that deleting &t=h makes the result a roadmap instead of a satellite image. Added a keyword and now I can get instant subway directions from my home by typing "mp" and the destination address. God I love efficiency.
posted by NickDouglas at 2:52 PM on July 8, 2009