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Using Google Transit, a trip from Union Station to Chatsworth on a Metrolink Train. Metrolink is one of the few small LA area agencies using Google Transit.
Google Transit has been working with Metro's schedules for over a year now, but Metro won't sign the final contract, according to sources.
Washington DC announced yesterday that their transit schedule data will be released, allowing it to go on Google Transit. Last fall, New York City and the local Metrolink joined the ranks of cities and agencies following a growing trend of aligning their public service with one of the world's largest brands. Still, in what the LA Times once called a "technological backwater," Metro is still dragging their feet.
"Google Transit has approached us on participating in their service," explained Metro Spokesman Dave Sotero in an e-mail to LAist last October. "We’re looking at it. In the meantime, we are in the process of making upgrades to our own online Trip Planner." Today, Sotero said there was nothing new to report on the project.
But Metro has had access to a beta Google Transit map with every bus and train schedule for over a year now, according to a source who spoke under the condition of anonymity. To open it up to the public, Metro just has to give Google the final blessing and sign a contract, the source said. It's just that the Metro powers that be have hesitations such as losing revenue. "If we want to use [our Trip Planner] as a future revenue stream, we don't know the impact of having all the information on a different system," Matt Raymond of Metro told the Times last year. That means they might want to put ads on their website, putting revenue streams ahead of public service.
What makes this worse is that Metro was sued last year for violating Section 508, which makes websites compliant for the visually and mobility impaired. The agency's Trip Planner is unusable for those using a screen reader, which helps disabled people navigate the web. Metro went into a settlement and is working towards compliancy (this means less of the PDF schedules).
Google Transit on the other hand is already compliant to 508 standards and is available in 27 languages. Metro's Trip Planner is only available in English leaving out thousands of residents and tourists.
It took petitions signed by hundreds of people to pressure Washington D.C's Metro to change their tune to Google. Perhaps that will be the changing tone here (along with a Facebook group begging for it), but Metro's new soon-to-be CEO Art Leahy cherry picked from Orange County Transit may also be the key as his transit system has already adopted Google Transit.
For now, Los Angeles County residents have the Trip Planner and two very useful, but hardly marketed, tools that are especially great for use on a cell phone: Rapidbus.net and NexTrip.
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The Metro Trip Planner is horrible. I cringe every time I have to use it.
Ahh! Why didn't you post this yesterday. I needed NexTrip for my out of town friend - since Trip Planner is horrible.
Ah, sorry! NexTrip is pretty cool and the couple times I used it, it was very helpful.
But thanks for posting! I've just sent it out to my fellow train riders!
I'm a graduate student in urban planning at UCLA. My boyfriend Juan Matute is a joint MBA/MA planning student at UCLA. Earlier today, he started a Facebook group called "Los Angeles wants Google Transit!". Here is the URL: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=68397917118.
Metro Trip Planner can be so clunky, unreliable, and/or inaccurate.
The heartbreaking thing for me is hearing people tell me stories of how they actually TRUSTED the results from the Metro Trip Planner, only to discover the results sent them at least 5 to 10 miles out of their way and wasted an extra hour of their time for things like job interviews. We can do better.
Thanks for staying on top of this issue Zach. Metro needs to feel the pressure of all the people who would love for the data to go live on Google. The Metro Trip Planner sucks, it's that simple. It was so awesome when I was in New York and could plan trips with multiple transit and walking options and even notes about upcoming service work, delays and detours.
Zach:
First of all, what's with the "...small LA area agenc(y)..." tag you used to describe Metrolink in the caption for the Google Transit map graphic at the top of the page? Metrolink is the sixth largest commuter train system in the country.
As far as Google Transit, Metrolink has made its schedule and stop information available to anyone who wants it in the Google Transit Feed Specification at http://metrolinktrains.com/tripplanner/schedule_data.php.We hope that developers will use the data to produce other applications for other devices.
Hey Francisco,
Thanks for the factoid about it being the sixth largest in the country. I didn't mean it in that context. I was just that anything compared to the behemoth Metro is much smaller in scale. But your fact is duly noted!
Thanks for sharing the link regarding the transit data page, that's very cool and I hope others make use of it!
Zach:
Just giving you a hard time. Keep up the good work!
Could anything be more typically LA pathetic than this, how fitting.
Some clueless boob at Metro is being told by some incompetent IT department: "google! we don't need google! We can make our own trip planner. It will be even better than google!"
...and the result is this. I assure you $500 and a case of Jolt Cola would be enough to hire 1 good college programmer to do this in a week. Instead there will be endless meetings and hand wringing...
Same old story, it's like being stuck behind the guy driving 30 mph on the highway.