According to Ludovic Privat from GPS Business News, Navitime launched an off-board pedestrian and in-car navigation solution for the U.S. market today.

The true innovation of this solution is a feature called Total NAVI, which calculates directions from point A to point B using a combination of transportation methods in one search: walking, driving, riding (trains, subways, ferries, etc), and flying. The search results show routes using a variety of transportation methods, and users can compare and choose among those choices. Turn-by-turn voice navigation is available for both pedestrian and car navigations.

This is, what we tend to call multi-modal navigation.

Dr. Keisuke Onishi from Navitech is quoted as follows:

"We started this service in Tokyo where many people rely on the complex public transportation system to get around. So far we have over 2.5 million paid subscribers across Japan, and this number shows there is great demand for pedestrian navigation."

As Tokios public transport undoubtedly is larger and more complex than most of other big cities' systems, this seems to make a point: if a solution solves a problem, people are willing to spend money.

In it's sheer simplicity, the birds-eye base maps by Navteq seem to be better than having no orientation at all.