Mass Transit Planning Feature for Calendar

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  I suggest a feature within calendar to accomodate public transportation (train, bus) schedules.  To plan around my commute times (and to get reminders), I put the train schedule into my calendar.  If I decide to take another train (maybe I have been asked to attend a late meeting that forces me to take the following train), instead of changing the times, I just copy the train appointment from another day where I took the same train.  (see other post on bug pertaining to copy/paste/delete)
  
  I'm not sure how this feature would work or look, but here's my thoughts:
  1. You load the schedule (the train/bus/airline companies would probably provide it on their website in downloadable format) into your PDA. 
  2. You make a special type of appointment (perhaps this feature could be used more than transportation - movie times, perhaps?), which allows you to input a 'to' and 'from', and the modes of transportation you have loaded (driving, A&B Railroad, Y&Z Railroad, CityBus).
  3. If 'driving', it allows you to input any start time, and grabs the previous appointment length automatically (eg, last time I scheduled "Work" to "Home" to take 44 minutes, so my 4:00pm appointment today automatically has an end time of 4:44pm)
  4. If you select a mass-transit selection (eg, CityBus) the start times are selectable from values in the list only.  The end time is automatically filled in from the bus schedule you loaded, too.
  5. If you select an airline selection, you can select from available departure times, and it will fill in the flight number into the comments field automatically.
  6. If you need to change your transportation schedule due to scheduling conflict, you can quickly and easily adjust your schedule - and immeditely see any impact it has on other appointments (eg, "whoops, now I will be late for my evening class!")
  
  Would anyone else find this HIGHLY useful as I would? 

  Tuesday, June 23, 2009 8:38 PM