

Catch the London underground with Google - adamcollingburn
http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2011/07/catch-london-underground-with-google.html

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babul
The Transit Navigation android app is a welcome addition, but I wish these
types of android apps would work without constant need for data connection
(i.e. would cache results and work offline once route downloaded) as nothing
is worse than taking an underground train and losing all route information due
to loss of signal. On a side-note "Pubtran London" is another good (and free)
android app for London travel which also takes into account route/line
closures and can also find National Rail train times/route info (for entire
UK) from within same tool.

~~~
abraham
Google Maps has an experimental feature for downloading map information. I
don't think it currently includes transit yet but I'm sure it will in the
future.

[http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2011/07/download-map-
area-a...](http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2011/07/download-map-area-added-
to-labs-in.html)

For cities that provide the information to Google, Maps includes realtime
delays and closures.

[http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2011/06/know-when-your-
bus-...](http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2011/06/know-when-your-bus-is-late-
with-live.html)

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ottbot
Looks very nice, but doesn't take into account tube status. This is especially
important on weekends where lots of closures occur due to engineering works.
Hopefully it will soon, otherwise the TfL site is the still the best bet if
you already have an idea of where you're going and just want to take a quick
look to see if anything will affect your journey.

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andybak
Excellent. Now maybe we can start putting pressure on these bastards:

[http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-11/03/railtrack-
ope...](http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-11/03/railtrack-open-data-
apps)

[http://mocko.org.uk/b/2011/01/08/open-uk-rail-data-media-
cov...](http://mocko.org.uk/b/2011/01/08/open-uk-rail-data-media-coverage-
broken-appeals-process/)

Apologies for the bile the situation regarding access to UK Rail Network data
gets me really irritated.

~~~
adamcollingburn
Network rail arn't a touch on TFL.

..In terms of crappiness.

~~~
corin_
I could be wrong, but I suspect the reason Londoners think that is just
because they use it so regularly. If you're catching 2+ TFL tubes a day, and
national services maybe a few times a year, maybe even a couple of times a
week, if they both have pretty similar success rates then TFL will feel much
worse, because it will get so many more bad memories.

I probably go to London at least ten times a month (either for a day or just
for an evening), and have slightly more network rail trips a month (all my
trips to london are an hour away by train), and in my experience I have much
more trust for TFL.

~~~
toyg
This sort of perception is what makes one think that train services in other
countries are always better than in your own backyard. The truth is that, in
Europe, the average level of railway service is more or less the same
everywhere these days; the exception is recent high-speed technology, which is
only available in a handful of countries ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
speed_rail_in_Europe> ).

~~~
corin_
Yep, and in other (non-travel) areas as well - grass is greener and all that.

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JacobAldridge
This is great - I rarely use buses because it's just too much of a headache
trying to determine how far I need to walk to get one, when the next one is,
and how far I need to walk at the other end - then trying to compare mutliple
options against those criteria! In central London I just grab the Tube because
it's an easier decision - the visual element of this makes buses far easier to
assess as an option.

~~~
goatforce5
It's worth investing the time to familiarize yourself with London's bus
network. I'm a big fan of the "spider maps" they introduced a few years ago.
They're kind of like mini tube-style maps for each neighbourhood:

[http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/gettingaround/maps/buses/busdiagra...](http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/gettingaround/maps/buses/busdiagrams.asp?borough=WES)

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nopassrecover
How is this only just happening? I live in Adelaide, Australia (1.2 million
approx) with some of the worst public transport I've experienced in the
developed world and we've had Google Maps with public transport integration
for years.

Incidentally, there was a cool iPhone app called TubeMap that made travelling
on the tube a breeze when I was there last which included service downtimes
which are apparently quite common, worked fine offline and was pretty fully
featured in all ways you could want. However, the Tube is only a small part of
the public transport for greater London.

~~~
avar
Because bureaucracies are slow, and it's taken this time for London to release
up-to-date and machine readable data.

~~~
nopassrecover
That's the easy and somewhat circular answer. I'd be curious to know what
rationale the service had for not integrating with Google Maps or vice versa.
Cost is the only legitimate one that comes to mind - I can't imagine concerns
about open data were a massive issue given that third parties have been using
and providing a subset of the same data for some time.

~~~
smackfu
Google didn't want more transit partners for a long time: the sign-up page
just said "check back later".

I think they are very concerned that the data feed will be bad or unreliable,
and that they will be providing bad directions. I know in NYC, the schedule
and such for subways is generally simple, but has crazy exception rules every
weekend for maintenance.

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ollysb
Great to see but it didn't work that great for the couple of searches I tried.
For London Bridge to Marylebone it confused London Bridge with Tower Bridge,
much like Robert McCulloch ;)

~~~
nopassrecover
I wouldn't be too hard on them - any sentient AI would probably make the same
mistake on a first pass given how widespread the confusion is. For instance do
a Google Image search on London Bridge.

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bhickey
This is worlds better than TfL's route planner. However, it seems to be
confused about where King's Cross/St. Pancras is located.

Moreover appears prone to suggesting some peculiar routes:
<http://bit.ly/qNyvHb>

~~~
panacea
That's not very peculiar though, is it? A short walk and a single direct bus.

On the weekend I prefer to catch buses over the underground (no pun intended)
even if it takes a bit longer.

I'm not in a rush and I enjoy the scenery (the front top seat of a double deck
bus is a very cheap VIP way to tour London).

I'd probably use that route.

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dhess
When I was in London recently, I used the London Transport iPhone app for
getting around:

[http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/london-
transport/id393119892?...](http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/london-
transport/id393119892?mt=8)

It was a little quirky (the bus arrival times seemed to be off a bit), but
overall quite nice. It includes all forms of transport (bus, tube, DLR, ferry,
and even Boris's bikes), lets your limit your travel options to just certain
types (e.g., "I only want to see bus routes right now"), and has nice
heuristics like whether you prefer to walk, how fast a walker you are, etc.

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juliano_q
I used it a few times here in São Paulo / Brazil to catch a bus and it worked
like a charm, but I would love some offline caching of routes since the 3G
sinal here is terrible and expensive.

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bruceboughton
Doesn't seem to have London Overground
([http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?saddr=canonbury&daddr=west...](http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?saddr=canonbury&daddr=west+croydon&hl=en&sll=51.394465,-0.146805&sspn=0.08965,0.154324&mra=ls&dirflg=r&ttype=dep&date=28%2F07%2F11&time=12:52&noexp=0&noal=0&sort=def&z=12&start=0))
though it does have Tramlink.

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corin_
Really awesome to see, I appreciate it so much whenever I'm in NYC or LA, good
to finally have it over here too.

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beck5
All I can say is finally! It shouldn't have taken this long but will be very
welcome by everyone.

