Cool things online in New Brunswick!

This week, while randomly surfing the internet, I discovered a cool section on the Department of Transportation website.

This link will bring up a map of the province and allow you to view many different highway camera images. Check out Saint John’s camera here! The really interesting cameras are the ones in Mont Farlagne, Quisibis Hill, and Meductic. These have the option to loop the images taken all day to see how the day was!

My only complaint is that the images are only taken every twenty minutes. It would be nice to see it updated every few minutes; but, this is a great start. It would also be nice to have more cameras along typically busy sections of the highway - you know, the ones that have an accident and get backed up for 5km.

The next interesting item is that the city of Fredericton worked with Google to get their bus route information online. Now you can get driving directions and public transportation directions. It will show where you need to walk to get on the bus, the bus route, and where to walk once you get off. It also tries to project transit times!

This is my fancy example:

• Here is a map showing driving directions from one area to another.
• Here is a map showing public transportation directions to the same place.

My favorite part is where it calculates the cost of a fare based the cost to drive there. Very cool!

I’d love to see this happen in Saint John. Google Maps is a very easy to use interface. Compare it to trying to figure out the bus routes by looking at PDF documents on the Saint John Transit website.