Watch 2 transit systems live on Google Maps (Finland & USA)

Live Real-time Helsinki Public Transport Map:

Long time readers of Google Maps Mania will know that I get pretty excited when I see Google Maps mashups showing the real-time GPS-equipped locations of things like trains.. or people. This next mashup takes the locations of buses and trams in the Helsinki City transport network and plots their real-time location to a Google Map for you to watch, live! Click on the vehicle and and the info-window gives you the option to show the route this it's traveling, plot the stops and also center the map on that bus/tram as it makes its way around the city. Watch the times to each stop as well. It's an invaluable tool to Helsinkians or tourists, as well as fun and addictive to watch for the rest of us! Very nicely done! [Via Digg]

UCSD Bus Map - Tom Trottier dropped me a line with the link to this Google Map which plots the location of a UCSD (University of California, San Diego) shuttle bus winding its way around the campus there. Writes Tom: "When my son asked me to look it up, I saw the bus being pulled off and sent to a maintenance garage, where it winked out when they turned the GPS off." Click the bus and the map centers on it to move along as it drives. Info includes the exact time (to the second) when the location was last updated, the heading it's on and a nice meter that shows the percentage of the bus that's currently full of passengers. This looks to be a pilot project by a company called Syncromatics..

DartMaps in Dublin, Ireland is another fantastic example of a live transit map (and was one of the first)..

Recent and related to transit:

• Google Maps adds transit data for dozens of cities worldwide! - Google Maps Mania, June 7/07
• Google Transit Planner - Recently updated to include San Diego & Reno (USA) and Japan (All regional and national rail networks, domestic airlines and ferries)

• Google Transit Data Feed Project - Open Source Software project aimed to gather open source tools which generate transit data in the Google Transit data feed format from existing transit industry data formats.
• New user-created transit Google Maps mashups from: Moscow, New Jersey, Los Angeles --> More transit mashups here..