Arguably the largest transit in the world, New York City Transit, today announced that it has released a new version of its Trip Planner online travel itinerary service. The service, which allows visitors and residents to get walking directions for their travel itinerary within the City, now features Virtual Earth maps, providing a much richer visualization experience. The press release can be found here.

On the site you can plan your route as I have below (there is also an option for a round trip route) and set preferences such as what time you will leave or the time you wish to arrive, how much you wish to walk, and whether you want to travel by subway, bus or express bus.

Once you hit "Go", you are presented with trip options, adjacent to which is a "map" as seen in the screenshot below.

Click on this to get your map with the route indicated. Click on the "Show Walking Directions" tab to get the directions in a text format.

Want to get a better idea what this route looks like? Switch over to 3D and take advantage of the most impressive 3D building coverage in Virtual Earth to visualize your route and get an understanding of the lay of your destination.

Click on "Show Subway Routes" to see the subway lines layered on top of the map. What's impressive about this is that it is done with our Mapcruncher API which allows you to register raster imagery directly on top of Virtual Earth maps.

Very happy to see the NYCT recognize Virtual Earth as the platform of choice for providing constituent services to a BROAD audience through a web based service. As the announcement states,  the Trip Planner’s Virtual Earth driven user interface allows customers to search and explore city locations and points of interest from all angles and vantage points and retrieve point-to-point routing directions from the comfort of their home, office, or hotel room prior to heading out the door.