Google Train View Arrives

Google has released Street View imagery for the Albula Railway in Switzerland. The imagery is available for the section of the line between Albula and Bergun. This is a small section of the famous Glacier Express route.



Via: Street View Funny

SimCity Lausanne Transit on Google Maps

Vasile Cotovanu has created a new Google Map application, Lausanne Transit Network Simulator, using his popular and open-sourced transit network simulator. And I think it is the most impressive yet!

Vasile's latest simulation shows in real-time the public transit network of Lausanne in Switzerland. The simulator animates the town's buses in real-time. What makes this simulation even more impressive is the Google Maps aerial (Bird's Eye) imagery available in Lausanne.

The simulation maps the Lausanne public transit network and time-table, which involves more than 150km of travel and more than 300 stations, with 5,000 vehicles a day making almost 100,000 stops.

Using Vasile's vehicle-simulator you can create your own real-time public transit network simulator for any town or city with the help of the code, available from GitHub. To create your own simulated network you just need to plot your track / road network and the vehicle timetables in JSON format.

The network simulator can also be seen in action on:

• Swiss Railways(SBB) network simulator
• Romanian Railways(CFR) network simulator
  

Swiss Parlament Revealed with Google Maps

Google Maps doesn't play a huge part in this visualisation of the Swiss Parlament but it is hugely impressive.

The visualisation reveals the interests of the country's members of parliament. If you click on an MP's seat in the visualisation a political profile is displayed listing all the MP's political affiliations, mandates and business interests.

If you then select one of the business interests, pressure groups etc listed you can view further details about the organisation, including a Google Map of its Swiss headquarters.

Parlament Explorer

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Running a Marathon in Street View

The self styled 'most beautiful marathon in the world' is taking place on the 10th September. If you don't fancy hauling yourself up the Swiss Alps at a swift pace or if you can't get to Jungfrau this weekend you can still enjoy the gorgeous views on offer with this Google Map.

Jungfrau Marathon is a Google Map of the route that allows you to view photography taken along the whole of the route.

The application allows you to set your pace and then just press 'play'. The map then animates along the marathon route and gives you a first person view with imagery especially captured for this application.

The map even includes an elevation chart that shows you just how steep those mountain slopes really are. This is exactly how I like my marathons - with gorgeous scenery and viewed from my armchair.

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Proximity Search with Google Maps

Arrlee is a new Google Maps based application that can tell you how far you can travel from a destination on public transport within a certain time.



Arrlee give three good examples of when you might need to carry out a proximity search:

• You are planning a weekend trip and are looking for locations you can travel to in a specified time
• You are looking for a new job within a certain commuting time from your home
• You want to find somewhere to live within a certain commuting time from a specific location
  
  

To use Arrlee just enter a station name and set the time available to travel. You can even add points of interest to the map, so, for example, you can find out where all the museums are within a certain travelling time of a location.



Arelee currently works in Germany, Austria and Switzerland but there are plans to add more countries soon. A mobile version is also in development.



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An Epic Adventure on Google Maps

American author and adventurer John Harlin has set out on an epic journey to follow the entire Swiss border under his own power, a 2,000km odyssey with more than 170,000m of climbing. You can follow John's journey on swissinfo.ch's John Harlin Live Google Map.



The map shows John's current position (at the time of writing he appears to be approaching the Matterhorn). The map also includes the amazing photographs that John has taken on his journey, links to John's daily reports and some of the interesting features and points of interest that John is passing on his epic journey.



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Climbing the Matterhorn with Street View

Street View Funny noticed today that the ski runs around Zermatt, Switzerland now have Street View coverage on Google Maps. The new imagery includes this great view of the Matterhorn, above.



The Zermatt images were collected by the Street View snow mobile, which was first used to capture imagery for the 2011 Winter Olympics in Canada.



Skiing in Zermatt is split up into four areas; Sunnegga, Gornergrat, Klein Matterhorn and Schwarzsee. It appears to me that all four main skiing areas have been covered in this new Street View release from Google.





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Street View Arrives in Monaco

Google Maps has added Street View for the principality of Monaco. As well as this new Street View imagery for Monaco the Street View trike has been busy in Switzerland.

As the second smallest country in the world (after Vatican City) it probably didn't take the Street View car too long to capture the latest imagery on Google Maps. Despite its size, however, Monaco has a lot of interesting sights.

Now you can follow the route of the Monaco Grand Prix in glorious panoramic Street View. If cars aren't your thing then you can take a virtual stroll around Monaco's quays and ogle at all the expensive yachts.



In Switzerland the Street View trike has visited the inside of Château Chillon.



It has also invaded the Three Castles of Bellinzona.



It then went on to capture Château Gruyères.



Via: Le blog officiel de Google France, Zorgloob and Street View Funny

Road Races in Street View

Swiss Post - Running View

UbiLabs has developed a very nice Google Maps based application for Swiss Post that allows you to view upcoming road races with Street View. Currently you can preview the Grand-Prix von Bern, the Lausanne Marathon and the Schweizer Frauenlauf Bern with Running View.

For each race it is possible to preview the route in Google Street View. All you need to do is press 'play' and you can view an animation of the route using Google Street View images. You can pause and adjust the speed of the Street View animation of the route at any time.

A Google Map with a rotating marker gives you an overview of the current position and an elevation chart shows the elevation at each point of the track.

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The Swiss Alps Street View Competition

This winter the Street View snowmobile is taking to the Swiss Alps.

In order to decide which ski resorts will be visited by the Street View snowmobile Google are holding a vote with MySwitzerland.com . Voters can choose between 30 resorts and the winners will soon appear on Google Maps.

You can view precious Street View imagery captured by the Google snowmobile in Canada at the Dave Murray Downhill, from the top of the 7th Heaven Chairlift on Blackcomb, and from the peak of Whistler.

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Get on Your Bike with Google Maps

Cycling the Alps


Cycling the Alps is a Google Map with a lot of information and some very nice features for anyone who is interested in cycling the Alps.

If you right-click on any of the map markers you can view details about the selected mountain pass, view photogrpahs or videos, view a tour of the pass with the Google Earth browser plug-in, or post a comment.

Using the menu bar at the top of the map you can select to view passes by height, select layers showing webcams, Wikipedia, YouTube or Panoramio photos and you can even view camp-sites.

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Video Street View in Action

Global Vision

Global Vision is a Google Maps mashup that lets the user explore Switzerland via a number of video Street Views. It is a little like Google's Street View only it uses panoramic videos rather than still panoramic images.

I first posted about about Global Vision in October last year, however since then the site has expanded its coverage from Geneva to cover a lot more of Switzerland's roads.

It is a lot of fun to explore Switzerland in Global Vision. Just select a road from the Google Map and press play on the video. As the video plays you have full control of the camera view. For example, it is possible to take a virtual drive along the shore of Lake Léman, past the Chateau de Chillon, panning the camera to view the chateau as you pass.

Almost as good as being there for real.

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