Yesterday, Metro announced that the beta version of their Trip Planner was open for business. It features a clickable map, routes that feature more than one mode of transit, and more. You can check it out here.

I haven't used King County's Trip Planner in years, because I found it to be slow, stupid, and unable to recognize a whole bunch of addresses. The beta Trip Planner fixes most of my complaints. The interface seems pretty zippy, although it's not as clean or as simple as Google Maps. But, just for fun, I looked up a trip from The Stranger's offices to the Lynnwood Municipal Golf Course on both the Beta Trip Planner and Google Maps. Google's directions involved a taxi ride from the Lynnwood Transit Center to the golf course, whereas the Trip Planner suggested Edmonds bus route C116 to finish the trip. Which, as far as I'm concerned, means the Trip Planner beat out Google. This is the first time in years that King County's site has bested Google in one-on-one trip-planning combat.

Of course, I'd prefer it if King County had an app with all this information. The times when I plan a trip are actually pretty low; what I need is real-time transit information. I've basically got all the information I need, between One Bus Away and Transit App, but there's always room for one more good transportation app, especially if it would play well with other regional transit options.