We now have the ability, through tools offered by Google, to add walking trails and paths to Google Maps.

Many trails throughout the city are already included on Google Maps, however a significant number of them are not.

We are currently in the process of mapping the trails in Bowring Park, and some of the East Coast Trail. We plan on mapping as much of the East Coast Trail in the St. John's area as possible.

If there are any OFFICIAL walking trails in your area that are not on Google Maps already please let us know and we can add them. An official trail/path is one that is intended for public use.

Google Maps has a feature that allows people to search for "walking directions" between two locations. The more trails we add to the map the more options people will have when planning how to get from one point to another on foot or by bicycle.

You can let us know of any trails in your areas through our Contact Form or our Facebook page at facebook.com/EssentialTransit

We are getting very close to the launch of our new news site. The new site will bring you the latest transit related news from across the country.

We have close to 1000 articles indexed already, and are adding more on a daily basis.

We still have some finishing touches to put on it before it is ready, but we will keep you posted on the progress of this as we get closer to launching the new site.

As we mentioned last week we are working on a new transit news website that makes it easier to view and search for transit related news.

To avoid having to post news to our current system, and the one that is in progress, we are temporarily suspending the publishing of transit news on our website to allow us to get the news articles added to the new system. Relevant news articles will still be posted to our various pages on Facebook though, so you can still follow stories of interest.

Once the new system is up and running news from the new system will still be shown in the ticker on the right side of our website at http://www.essentialtransit.com as it is now.

We expect the new system to be up and running within the next week or so.

Making news relating to public transit and pedestrian issues easily available to the public is an important part of what we do. Without having the necessary news and information easily available it is hard to keep track of ongoing issues and make an informed opinion on many things.

While we do currently have a news section on our webpage it is lacking in many features that we want to make available. One of the big features that is lacking is the ability to search the news articles, and to sort news based on location.

To make it even easier to get all of your transit news in one place we have decided to launch a new website dedicated entirely to news. It'll be your "one stop shop" for all Canadian transit related news. It includes the ability to view news based on province, and news articles can be searched easily. This will also give us the ability to offer other online groups automated access to news of importance in their local areas as well. So, as an example, a Facebook group in Vancouver could have any news for the province of B.C. automatically published to their Facebook page.

The site is currently under development, but you can check out a screenshot of it here: Screenshot of Transit News page.

We expect the site to be up and running within the next couple of weeks, and a message will be posted here when it is completed.