Admit it: you’d be totally lost without your cellphone. Especially if it’s a smartphone. We’ve come to rely on them for everything from checking email on the fly to writing down an important note to actually making phone calls to checking the handy maps to make sure we don’t get lost. So when new models are set to come out, it’s super exciting, right?

Except there’s one thing that is going to make the launch of the iPhone iOS a little less exciting: transit directions (buses, subways, etc) won’t come standard on the map system on the new phones. Why? Apple recently decided to drop Google Maps as it’s built-in mapping system and instead are going to use a new Apple-delivered map system. Okay, fair enough. But the huge downside? If you want to figure out how to get somewhere without driving, you’ll have to download a third-party app. This is bad news for those of use to don’t own a car and instead get around town via bus, bike or foot. Plus, there are stats to back up the fact that less and less people are relying on cars as their primary mode of transportation. (Did you know that young people are 23% less likely to drive now than they were in 2001?). Come on, Apple, we thought you were supposed to be up on the trends.

According to Examiner’s David Herron, “… this is a big step backwards for pedestrians and transit users, because it forces those people to first know they have to acquire a third party application, then find and install the best one, and finally perhaps pay for this support.”

Organizations are already taking action against this decision. Yesterday Walkscore, a website that rates how walkable cities and neighborhoods are, launched an online petition to get Apple to reverse this decision. It urges people to tweet directly to Apple to let them know that a lot of pedestrians rely on this feature and that many would be lost, literally, without it.

What do you think of this decision?

For more info check out David Herron’s full article from Examiner, as well as the blog from DC Street Blog.