

Live Google transit directions change the value of transit - mblakele
http://ideas.4brad.com/live-google-transit-directions-seriously-changes-value-transit

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iconjack
Back in 2008 I submitted a similar idea to Google for their 10^100 idea fest.
It goes a step farther in that not only do you get directions from your phone,
but the buses are re-routed dynamically, in real time, to optimize travel
times. Think of your phone as a fancy elevator call button—you use it to
summon a bus but furthermore the central routing computer knows where you are
and where you want to go. The buses (er, bus drivers—for now) also get
directions from the routing computer.

The 10^100 deal seemed to just quietly fizzle. I never heard back anything,
and I'm not sure they ever picked any projects to run with. FWIW, here's the
submission.

10\. What one sentence best describes your idea? (maximum 150 characters)

Bring the bus system into the new millennium.

11\. Describe your idea in more depth. (maximum 300 words)

The goal is to revamp the municipal bus system by using a little technology.
The key ideas are:

a. Riders use their cell phones as a kind of "elevator call button." Using an
Android app, they tell a central computer where they are (possibly automatic
with GPS) and where they want to go. b. There are no fixed routes. A central
computer is continuously processing requests and sending routing information
to the bus fleet in real time. c. Riders are given instructions, via their
phone, as to where to go to catch which bus, and where to get off. d.
Integration with Google Maps is an obvious win!

12\. What problem or issue does your idea address? (maximum 150 words)

Current bus systems are underutilized because of long wait times and because
most riders don't know the routes well enough to feel comfortable.

13\. If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and
how? (maximum 150 words)

The biggest beneficiary would be those who want to ride the but but don't now
because of route unfamiliarity and long wait times. All commuters would
benefit from the decrease in traffic and pollution.

14\. What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground?
(maximum 150 words)

At first, a simulation to demonstrate the effectiveness of the new model.
Then, a pilot city to give it a real spin.

15\. Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and
successfully implemented. How would you measure it? (maximum 150 words)

The desired outcome is an increase in ridership and fewer cars on the road. A
straightforward metric is a simple rider count.

18\. If you'd like to recommend a specific organization, or the ideal type of
organization, to execute your plan, please do so here. (maximum 50 words)

I think Google would be an ideal implementer.

~~~
erjiang
I think you'll be happy to hear that not only has this idea been worked on
starting much earlier than 2008, but I was part of a group to implement this
for a city in the US. Service is scheduled to start later this year.

As it turns out - many of the hurdles are non-technical, especially without
many examples of pre-existing systems to base it off of.

~~~
cbsmith
Yup, this is what I remember discovering back when I proposed this idea at
Google back in 2007. ;-)

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erjiang
As a programmer who develops software for public transit, there is a lot of
opportunity for technology to make a difference. But, it's not the kind of
market that VCs and entrepreneurs prefer.

Public transit agencies vary dramatically from city to city, but they are the
ones who provide Google with data on their transit system's timetables. In
fact, Google is the last in a chain of software and manual labor that creates
and manages transit schedules. It's very hard to create software that captures
all the nuances and variations in transit to create a one-size-fits-all
solution.

The other tough part is funding - public transit improvements are often driven
by grant money because the operating budget all goes to day-to-day expenses.
And oftentimes the wealthier people who could make a difference in transit
(e.g. SV techies) own cars or otherwise avoid public transit because it's so
inconvenient, so they often don't notice the problems.

~~~
maigret
Hi, I'd like to hear more why data couldn't bridge that gap and why Google
maps would work accross the world for cars but not for public transits.

\- The game would be probably to provide some kind of standard or API that
would make all those independant providers rally accross a common model. Would
save communities cost & improve the service. Probably a big market.

\- If you look outside of the US, public transit (in some form or the other)
is for wealthy people as well. Think Japan & Europe.

~~~
BioGeek
> The game would be probably to provide some kind of standard or API that
> would make all those independant providers rally accross a common model.

This common specification already exists. It is called GTFS [1] (General
Transit Feed Specification) and can be used to exchange static transit data.
There is also GTFS-realtime [2], an extension to GTFS, to be used to exchange
realtime transit data.

The specification was designed through a partnership of the initial Live
Transit Updates partner agencies, a number of transit developers and Google.
The specification was introduced and released under the Creative Commons
Attribution 3.0 license in August 2011.

[1]
[https://developers.google.com/transit/gtfs/](https://developers.google.com/transit/gtfs/)
[2] [https://developers.google.com/transit/gtfs-
realtime/](https://developers.google.com/transit/gtfs-realtime/)

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qzervaas
As the author of a public transit iOS/Android app, these kinds of improvements
to Google Maps both excite me (from a "that's cool" perspective) and worry me
(from a business perspective) at the same time.

Real-time data is an area Google haven't pushed too hard into at this time
(despite developing the GTFS-RealTime standard), so that has been an easy way
for me to differentiate from Google Maps.

If anybody's interested in the kinds of real-time and static data Google (and
other developers) use, I collect and archive many of the feeds here:

[http://transitfeeds.com](http://transitfeeds.com)

Hoping to add additional tools for browsing / searching this data when I
figure out how to make it all scale nicely.

~~~
tacticus
It's really disturbing how well populated queensland is and how fail the
victorian transit providers are :\

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jpatokal
_Due to how rapidly things change, the system also needs to display when
multiple options are equivalent. For example, it might say, “Go to the train
platform and take the B train northbound.” Then due to how things have change,
you see a C train show up — do you get on it? Instead, it should say, “Take a
B, C or E train going north towards X, Y or Z, but B should come first.”_

Google Maps already does this to some extent. In the query for "Zurich Hbf to
Zurich Airport" below, the first option is given as "IC/IR/S/S2/S16", and only
when you click on "Next trip" are you given a specific train name, platform,
departure time etc.

[https://goo.gl/maps/yibGy](https://goo.gl/maps/yibGy)

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fred_durst
If anyone wants to point to a place where the latest tech boom has benefited
the environment, the best place to look in my opinion is public transit.
Catching a bus or train, which once held a significant learning curve is now a
couple taps on a smartphone or a text message away.

I remember going back to San Francisco with a couple friends and they were
just as able to navigate muni as I was, even though they had never lived
there.

~~~
idank
Been living in San Francisco for a few weeks now and it still takes me a
minute to figure out which direction I need to take in the Metro. Why they
chose such unintuitive names such as Inbound and Outbound baffles me.

~~~
chipsy
The Metro system outgrew what it was circa 1980 and hasn't really caught up
with itself. Everything used to end at Embarcadero and there were no loops or
crossovers, so station platforms were simply labelled "Downtown" or
"Outbound." Then the lines started going beyond Embarcadero starting in 1998
with the extension to Caltrain. Then we got the T Third Street extension in
2007. At that point the old convention stopped making sense, and I completely
agree with the confusion.

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geden
I've recently started using Citymapper for iOS and have found it to be quite
simply the most useful app on my phone. 'Next level' usefulness, stemming from
great UI that shows you the time and cost (in money or calories!) of making
the journey by foot, bus, underground/train or taxi. It turns out in London
'by foot' is a much more viable option than you think once the overheads of
other methods are taken into account.

Weird thing is - it doesn't seem to use real time data, just uses average wait
times, based on timetables. Turns out in London and Berlin where I use it,
there are so many transport options that average wait times, (when known)
never seem problematic.

That said, combine in real time data then clearly choosing routes becomes
easier.

After that combining in data on how loaded each vehicle is makes things a
whole lot more efficient. Ie 'walk 2 mins extra to this other stop as this
next bus is rammed'.

Good times!

~~~
koyote
>Weird thing is - it doesn't seem to use real time data, just uses average
wait times, based on timetables. Turns out in London and Berlin where I use
it, there are so many transport options that average wait times, (when known)
never seem problematic.

I am quite sure Citymapper uses live data for buses (not sure about tubes as
some lines, such as the Circle/District, don't always have correct data).

So it will often recommend you to take the bus if there happens to be one
shortly arriving at a stop nearby as opposed to walking to the tube that might
be 5-10min walk away.

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CalRobert
Sadly some cities are loath to release their data. I more or less begged Santa
Monica's Big Blue Bus to let me make an app showing nothing more than the
real-time arrival data they already had on signs (but only in the very busiest
and most touristed areas) and they blew me off repeatedly. They have been
claiming they will add this for 6 years. Meanwhile this data is available for
every other bus operator (LA Metro, Culver City bus, etc.) in the area.

~~~
bcoates
Even the non-realtime data is dicey, I keep having apps showing weekday
schedules on weekends for BBB lines.

I want a waze for buses that treats buses as an observation problem instead of
a data-entry problem.

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leoedin
The Google Maps public transport routing in London is often sub-optimal. It
seems very hesitant to recommend taking the tube - an example recently
involved it recommending that I took a 45 minute bus rather than a 10 minute
tube journey.

I imagine that the problem is _hard_ \- in London you can easily have 10
different bus routes available. Start combining multiple buses in complicated
routes and the number of possible routes grows exponentially. It may also be
that the system places different value on the variables than me - journey
cost, number of changes, the journey time, the likelihood of delay (buses in
rush hour can be slow!) and acceptable walking distance all play a part in my
selection of routes, but if the algorithm is set up differently then it might
produce a different result. I think Google are trying to address this by
gathering data about your habits and informing choices based on that
(certainly Google Now makes route recommendations based on my location
history, and tweaks that based on historical route preference). It will be
interesting to see how this progresses.

~~~
ghaff
There's sort of an opposite weirdness in San Francisco which is a bit ironic
given where Google is located. Namely, based on various visits, Google seems
very big on one taking the streetcar. Now SF streetcars are all very scenic
and fun and all that but--with the possible exception of a few routes at non-
crowded times of day (if there is such a thing)--useful public transportation
they really aren't. (For one thing, there's often a block long line of
tourists waiting to get on.)

But, yeah, it's hard. Not sure how you handle it other than just excluding
streetcars from the list. (Which might not be a terrible heuristic in SF;
locals feel free to disagree.)

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sanxiyn
Seoul Transport Operation provides a public REST API including the live
transit feed. Apparently this is not common?

[http://api.bus.go.kr/](http://api.bus.go.kr/)

~~~
qzervaas
It is becoming far more common, especially in the 12-18 months. Not much in
Asia yet though on this front.

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maaaats
I moved to Oslo (the city mentioned in the article) last week. I have to say
Google Maps hasn't always played nicely, if it were not for me having been
here before I would have wasted a lot of time.

I have a much better experience using HERE Maps (by "old" Nokia). The great
part about them is that you can download a region (not just buffer map data as
you do on Google) so searching in the map, public transport, directions etc.
all work when in unknown cities abroad without mobile data.

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cbhl
Google Maps actually already does some of the things listed in the article
(such as indicating multiple alternatives between two particular stops) but
its ability to do so depends on the quality of the data provided by the local
transit agencies.

~~~
ithkuil
Yes, sometimes I feel sad I have to read about all this cool stuff that is
just "not available in your country" usually because it's a too small market
or whatever. In particular transport data (and maps and even streetview) for
Dublin, Ireland is very bad, which is weird given that it hosts Google's EU
HQ.

~~~
cbhl
Transport data for Google Maps is something you have to (and can) lobby your
municipal government for. (I'm assuming your transit authorities are under
municipal jurisdiction, like the ones in Canada and the US.)

It took us the better part of the last decade, but virtually every transit
operator in the Toronto, Ontario, Canada area is now on Google Maps. Not
necessarily with real-time GPS, although the transit authorities in more well-
to-do municipalities tend to have it.

But you have to work with your neighbours to make it a priority. Whenever they
ask for comments (hopefully your municipality is modern enough to ask for this
through online forms) then fill it out and ask for them to provide Google Maps
data.

(On the other hand, local lawsuits also had a part in it -- a disabled (blind
or deaf, I forget which) person sued a local transit authority saying that not
having the stops announced was preventing him from using public transit and
won. So every transit authority had to have drivers read out every stop until
they could install computers with GPS and LCD displays and text-to-speech to
read out all the stops. Once the buses and trains all had GPS and computers
on-board, adding real-time tracking was just a matter of installing a GSM
modem on each vehicle.)

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panarky
Helsinki’s personalized bus service is like Uber for public transportation

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7391885](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7391885)

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rileya
As a Seattle resident I've found the OneBusAway app _extremely_ useful, it's
never been off by more than a couple minutes. Getting widespread realtime
transit info into a mainstream app like gmaps could be a complete game-changer
for public transit.

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fiatjaf
With Google Transit becoming so good, probably because of Waze data, will
people continue to use Waze?

If people stop using Waze, wouldn't Google Transit become worse?

~~~
cdh
I'm not sure that's the case, but if it were, perhaps more people would start
using Waze again after Google Transit became worse. (Repeat process forever.)

