How does one get from A to B these days?
Like almost everything else, you’d start by going online, and seek Google‘s advise.
Google’s maps are superb after all, and their driving instructions excellent. Our collective blind reliance on Google as the world’s single source of information on almost anything is increasingly worrying. Not that I have reason to believe they do anything wrong, or filter or rate or present information in a way that I disagree with, but I grow increasingly uneasy about this whole thing.
Supersized media barons such as Axel Springer or Rupert Murdoch are tiny players in the information monopoly game, when you compare it to Google.
So, when it comes to journey planning within the UK, it turns out that there is an excellent, government-funded alternative: Transport Direct.
Unlike Google, Transport Direct only covers the UK.
Unlike Google, Transport Direct considers the use of sustainable transport (i.e. bicycles) and use of public transport in addition to regular use of roads and cars. They factor live travel news into the equation, compute the CO2 cost of a trip, know locations of car parks.
And, they aren’t run by Google.