Results tagged “googletransit”

Yesterday was a big day for Los Angeles transportation. Metro, the county's behemoth transit agency, officially announced their partnership with Google. But the county is large and there are various partner agencies throughout. Here's a sampling, with more to come in later days, of where other city transit systems stand with Google Transit:

Earlier this week, word got around that Google Transit was up and working in beta mode. Today, it became the real deal. Over 200 bus lines and five lines with more than 2.5 million data points are now on Google Transit, an option found on Google Maps.

After much pushing and prodding by the public and media, Metro finally succumbed, quietly launching Google Transit this past weekend. Go ahead and play, it's like we're in a real big city now, catching up with most other major ones.

Today Metro made a big step with an announcement that will give programmers a new tool to make and computer savvy commuters ecstatic. They launched a new beta developer website (and blog!) with two downloadable data sets--GIS and GTFS, or Google Transit Feed Specification, which is used in Google Transit. "This data set is a collection of tabular data describing route, stop, schedule, and fare information for Metro’s system," Metro said in a news release. "The GIS data is a collection of shapefiles for mapmakers who wish to include a layer of Metro Bus and Metro Rail lines and stops into a map."

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.

Franklin Avenue today spotlights someone's attempt to use Google Maps to suggest public transit options to get him from Downtown Los Angeles to Inglewood. Shouldn't be that hard to do, right? So what happened when he plugged in his plan? "Google Maps said the total trip would take 10 hours, 44 minutes by public transit -- and cost $10.50." In fact, that almost 11-hour journey had him getting to Inglewood via...Anaheim! Why does this seem horribly wrong? The answer--or blame--rests with Metro, who did not hop aboard the Google Transit train soon enough to get their routes meshed with the maps. So this trip has the traveler using Metrolink and OC Transit, and not Metro (same happens if you try to plot a public transit trip via Google on the iPhone). We wondered a few months ago if it would happen...it hadn't then, and it seems like it still won't. Silly Metro...what a wasted opportunity you're still ignoring!

As Metrolink announces their inclusion in Google Transit today (although, it's been live since October), Steve Hymon at the LA Times takes a rightfully and just swing at Metro for still not working with Google.