Is there a way to make overlays in Google Maps with bus routes and rental listings?

Hardware and technical stuff
1

A friend of mine and her son live in an apartment building that was recently bought; the new owners are giving all the tenants a short time to vacate the building. We’re trying to help them find a new place to live. She has to live close to the bus lines in our city and wants to know what places are available.

Is there a way to combine info in Google Maps or another map program from different sources like the local bus routes (metrotransit.org) and available rental property aggregator (apartments.com)?

2

Google Maps has a transit layer that displays bus / rail stops when selected. You can also search for a specific bus line and it will show the route as a path on the map.

Unfortunately, I’m not sure there’s a simple way to pull apartment data to add to the map. Hopefully the bus stops will give you a starting point, though.

3

Did a little more digging, and you can do a proximity search with the apartments.com search.

  • Search for an apartment, click on map view, click on more.
  • Click on Commute
  • Enter a destination (e.g. work or school), select public transit, and select a Max commute time.
  • The map view will now only display listings near public transit lines that can reach your destination in time.
  • You can add multiple destinations and the search will only return listings that can access every destination.

Hope this is still in time to be useful. Good luck!

4

That’s actually pretty cool that you can do that.

5

I never found that feature while poking at apartments.com. Thanks, I’ll tell her right away!