Don’t you just love it when someone takes a bunch of useful internet tools and turns them into something even cooler and more useful than each of the parts? In yet another thrilling use of the Google Maps API, Chris Smoak has created an amazing visualization project for the Seattle bus system. Add busmonster.com to your bookmarks and be astounded by it’s niftiness.

In addition to the already mentioned Google Maps, the project incorporates some of the most useful parts of the King County Metro site, which is a nice resource for keeping up-to-date about the latest in transit developments, schedules, route maps, and the very cool point-to-point trip planner [#]. BusMonster also uses some of the cool work from the University of Washington’s Intelligent Transportation Systems research group [#], which built tools to allow you to know when a bus is about to show up at your stop (mybus) or to watch the busses from your computer screen (busview).

In any case, if you’re someone that uses the bus to get around town or just like looking at really well-designed information tools you’re bound to find BusMonster to be a fantastic resource.

(via evan [lj])