DC Needs Google Transit
If you’re not familiar with Google Maps then stop right now and familiarize yourself with Google Maps. Kiss mapquest goodbye, Google Maps is much better. And one nice thing about Google Maps is that lately they’ve incorporated a Google Transit feature into the thing, letting you use Google Maps to plan a trip using a city’s transit system. But to make that work, they need cooperation from the city in question’s transit authority. Unaccountably, WMATA is refusing to do this.
And I mean really that I can’t account for it. Often when you see a policy put in place for no good reason, there’s at least a clear-cut bad reason for the policy. But what WMATA is doing here has no beneficiaries whatsoever that I can think of. If you live in DC or Maryland or Virginia (and I know a lot of you do) please sign this letter urging WMATA to reconsider its position.
56 Responses to “DC Needs Google Transit”
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December 15th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Get behind the CTA:
http://www.transitchicago.com/news/ctaandpress.wu?action=displayarticledetail&articleid=100614
Google and the L, together at last.
December 15th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
I find Google Maps to be unreliable at times. Just yesterday I put in an address and it pulled up someplace that was miles away from where I needed to be. Mapquest worked just fine.
Also, when using the street view feature on Google, I’ve often found that clicking on an arrow to move along the street will cause the site to jump to a completely random nearby location.
December 15th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Seems awfully short-sighted of them. I wonder if they’re afraid of losing traffic to their website.
December 15th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
My guess as to the reason is that its cutting out the NOVA software business.
December 15th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
I checked the WMATA website, and they appear to have their own trip planner.
December 15th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Google maps will completely ignore your street address input if it doesn’t recognize it and instead route you to the center of the city or zipcode you entered.
I find google maps useful, and I have their blackberry version installed on my phone. I find it very useful when I’m traveling, and need to find an office building or something where my meeting is taken place. Notably when you are on foot, and really don’t feel like walking around the block a second time.
December 15th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
And I mean really that I can’t account for it. Often when you see a policy put in place for no good reason, there’s at least a clear-cut bad reason for the policy. But what WMATA is doing here has no beneficiaries whatsoever that I can think of.
Well look. If DC cooperates than obviously the Chinese will know about our transit patterns and then they’ll sell these off the Iranians, who will then build a subway tunnel from Tehran to New York City in order to ship ten megatons of high-grade enriched falafal or some shit. Don’t worry – Michael Ledeen’s got it all figured out.
December 15th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
Why don’t you, you know, call them and ask since you’re a resident? Or is traditional reporting outside the job description?
Oh I’m sorry. That was rather sharp.
December 15th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
The linked site says, “All a transit agency has to do is send their schedule data in a specific format and sign an agreement with Google. ”
What’s in this agreement WMATA would have to sign? Would they still be allowed their own trip planner? Would they be allowed to give the same data to other companies? Why do they need an agreement at all? Why not simply put the data on the web site and let Google use it if they want. I would applaud the data being available in an open format, but I don’t see why they need to sign a deal with Google, and I’m a true blue google fanboy.
December 15th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
hi matt,
whilst maps.google is pretty good, depending on where you are, maps.yahoo is great (nice neighborhood segregation in places like ny and especially sf) and maps.live with the bird’s eye view is absolutely amazing. though street view for maps.google is almost there.
December 15th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
I know that some educational institutions have run into trouble using google docs or other google tools, because Google claims ownership for everything that is produced using those tools (a pretty extravagant claim). That wouldn’t seem to apply to map generation, but searches for maps and routes can reveal personal information that could be useful to marketers, and riders may not want to have to fork over that personal information just to be able to find a bus route.
In general, it’s worth remembering that Google is an advertising company that seeks to target users individually, and it may not be good public policy to outsource aspects of public transit to Google without strict controls on what information it can collect about users, and what it can do with that information.
December 15th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
This is a phenomenally stupid decision, but not terribly surprising. Even if you don’t love google maps, you have to concede that Google Maps/Transit is going to get better and better, at zero cost to the public. There’s absolutely no way/reason for any single municipal system to compete.
In Providence, some fellow Brown students and I became interested in ways to improve RIPTA’s bus service. We were most interested in realtime trakcing, but an obvious first step was google transit. One student pointed out that the route info RIPTA had supplied him with for a recent class project was Very close to the data Google Transit requires.
When we asked RIPTA if they were considering Google Transit, they said they were, but were waiting to hear back from google about something. This was clearly inaccurate, as the folks working on google transit will respond to a transit organization (or just about anyone) within the day. When we told them that we had contacted google, and we’d be willing to help them format the data they already had, that seemed to get the ball rolling. (Google wouldn’t let Brown provide them with the data). In a few months RIPTA got transit up and running without us having to do much else.
If DC public transit already has an online route finder, it goes without saying that a competent programmer could, in one day, format the data they are already storing and supply it to google. People shouldn’t hesitate to pressure
the WMATA to get its act together, but it might also be helpful if someone in the know could provide them with an example of just how easy getting data to Google would be.
December 15th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Getting bus routes and times on your iPhone with Google Maps is about the best thing ever.
December 15th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
What’s in this agreement WMATA would have to sign? Would they still be allowed their own trip planner? Would they be allowed to give the same data to other companies? Why do they need an agreement at all? Why not simply put the data on the web site and let Google use it if they want. I would applaud the data being available in an open format, but I don’t see why they need to sign a deal with Google, and I’m a true blue google fanboy.
I don’t know what’s in the agreement exactly – clearly it’s not any kind of exclusive agreement with Google. If I had to speculate, I’d guess it’s just some pro forma legalese, or maybe something along the lines of promising to keep the data feed relatively up-to-date (or notify Google if it’s not).
In any case, dozens of other major transit agencies seem to be fine with it…
December 15th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Google maps will completely ignore your street address input if it doesn’t recognize it and instead route you to the center of the city or zipcode you entered.
That explains a lot. Thx Other Steve.
December 15th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
If–and this is a pretty big “if”–WMATA uses the data from its trip planner (to serve as a proxy for use, notice underserved locations, etc.), they have at least some reason not to accept. I’m assuming Google isn’t in the habit of providing huge bundles of search data for free to its partners, because it probably has more to lose from starting down that path than it does from not offering DC on Google Transit.
Furthermore, Google Maps (in my experience) is especially bad at noting construction and other recent changes to landscapes, so I can’t imagine they’d be on top of service outages. If people have to go to the WMATA website, they’ll see the service outages announcements before planning the trip.
(And since WMATA already uses Google Maps for its walking directions, the only real difference between WMATA trip planner and Google Transit is the host. Unless I’m missing something here?)
December 15th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
@MikeJ: I’m pretty sure that the agreement is mainly to ensure that the online data is actively maintained (and to protect against lawsuits). The reason (as I understand it) for Google not accepting data from third parties is that they want to reliably be made aware of any maintenance/service changes.
December 15th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
In general, it’s worth remembering that Google is an advertising company that seeks to target users individually, and it may not be good public policy to outsource aspects of public transit to Google without strict controls on what information it can collect about users, and what it can do with that information.
That doesn’t really make sense to me.
The data the government is providing is not sensitive. Use of the Google service is entirely voluntary (and the WMATA website’s route planner would remain available).
One could use the same logic to claim that the government should instruct its webmasters to block all access to Google’s indexing robots – after all, someone using a Google search engine to search for government documents might be targeted for ads…?
December 15th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
SEPTA isn’t playing ball, either. This guy superimposed the stations on gmaps by hand.
http://bieniosek.com/maps/
December 15th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Re: Why not give the data.
Besides the fact that WMATA might use the data from their own transit planning site, there are ad revenues to think about. WMATA already uses google adsense. If people just used Google Transit, a percentage of the ad revenue that goes to WMATA would be lost. Considering the millions that view the transit site, this could be a substantial amount of money for a department that is encouraged to be as self funding as possible.
Google Transit can’t just port DC transit data because its copyrighted information.
December 15th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
I’m pretty sure that the agreement is mainly to ensure that the online data is actively maintained (and to protect against lawsuits).
In that case I’d certainly never sign it. I haven’t looked but I’ll bet there’s a disclaimer on WMATA’s website saying that the schedules are their best guess and if they aren’t you have no recourse. There’s no reason to commit yourself to ongoing work for google’s benefit.
The right answer is to tell people, “here’s a copy of our schedule data in an open format (xml, csv, whatevs), do what you want with it but don’t come crying to us if it’s a day or two out of date.” Obviously it would be good if they did keep it up to date, but I’d never agree that I had to.
December 15th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
MikeJ –
WMATA’s trip planner only says “Trip Planner itineraries may not account for temporary delays or detours caused by unexpected service disruptions, scheduled maintenance and track work, or adjusted schedules for weekend bus detours.”
I don’t think that’s what Google is concerned about. They just want to be told if WMATA starts running say, twice as many blue line trains at rush hour, or opens a whole new line to Dulles or something. I think that’s pretty reasonable.
December 15th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
Besides the fact that WMATA might use the data from their own transit planning site, there are ad revenues to think about. WMATA already uses google adsense. If people just used Google Transit, a percentage of the ad revenue that goes to WMATA would be lost. Considering the millions that view the transit site, this could be a substantial amount of money for a department that is encouraged to be as self funding as possible.
I think this is the most cogent argument against releasing the data I’ve yet heard, but it still doesn’t really hold water.
Leaving aside whether it’s really appropriate for a public transit agency to provide what amounts to inferior service in exchange for more ad revenue…
1) I doubt the ad revenues from the site are all that substantial.
2) Ads served to users of the trip planner are a fraction of that (the trip planner is probably the single largest use of the site, but there’s lots of other stuff people look there for too).
3) Even most of the trip planner visits are probably safe, as a lot of people will continue to use the WMATA site rather than Google, and,
4) A lot of the Google users will not be stolen from WMATA site, but rather, additional users, and perhaps even people discovering the system for the first time or expanding their use of it. (E.g., someone looking up directions on Google, clicks the “transit” button, discovers they can get there on the bus. Or someone coming home from the bar, doesn’t know the nearest stop. Would otherwise take a cab, but voila, the transit function in their iPhone’s map application works. Etc.)
Really, WMATA is just shooting themselves in the foot.
December 15th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
I was not aware of Google Transit, but having just spent the past twenty minutes playing with it, I am not impressed. It didn’t account for traffic patterns and would often send me on trips I know would take longer than alternate routes. I know the public transportation in my city (Seattle) very well, and only about 15% of the time would I take their advice. For whatever its worth, the Metro King County Trip Planner is right about 95% of the time.
December 15th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
There’s additional overhead for WMATA in terms of having to share data on route changes, plans, etc with Google. That takes work. They’ve already expended a lot of effort and money on their own trip planning program and don’t want that to go down the drain by piggybacking on Google’s (better? no clue) tool. Institutional inertia; easy enough to explain.
If Google was completely good hearted in all of this, they’d of course link to WMATA’s planner regardless of any data sharing agreement. They’ve got their agenda, too. DC shouldn’t give the data to Google without getting something in return.
Luckily, Baltimore was so behind the fucking times that we had to download giant PDF maps to figure out where the buses go (and we’re not particularly smart or tech-minded in Baltimore; no one does this) so when Google came around and did the work for us it was a fucking Godsend.
December 15th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
There’s additional overhead for WMATA in terms of having to share data on route changes, plans, etc with Google. That takes work. They’ve already expended a lot of effort and money on their own trip planning program and don’t want that to go down the drain by piggybacking on Google’s (better? no clue) tool. Institutional inertia; easy enough to explain.
The data is already there.
Modulo some massaging into Google’s preferred format, this is exactly the same scheduling tables that are behind WMATA’s existing trip planner. Which they presumably update regularly with route changes, etc.
When they update their own trip planner, getting the new data to Google should be as simple as running the internal data through an automatic reformatting tool (as EERac pointed out, a tool that should be no more than a couple afternoons’ work for a competent programmer) and sticking the new files up on the website for Google to fetch.
This is a trivial amount of extra work for a lot of added value.
December 15th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
The Chicago version is kickass. It gives you multiple options and often times routes that don’t seem good choices (say a bus line that goes out of your way, but runs more frequently) have faster transit times than the obvious “as the crow flies” routes. So DC should get their act together and join Google Transit. It should all be public data anyway and Google shouldn’t even have to ask.
December 15th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
I’m definitely with MikeJ:
The right answer is to tell people, “here’s a copy of our schedule data in an open format (xml, csv, whatevs), do what you want with it but don’t come crying to us if it’s a day or two out of date.” Obviously it would be good if they did keep it up to date, but I’d never agree that I had to.
December 15th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
It’s not just about the schedule. I think there is live GPS data on just about every bus and train to give you up to the minute reports.
December 15th, 2008 at 7:01 pm
It’s up to the transit agency whether to share the feed publicly (not just with Google) but the GTFS at least provides a standard data format to make it available in. (The Google transit site has links to the feeds from several agencies that do share the GTFS data they generate publicly, including SF and Portland.)
December 15th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
Responding to a few similar points thrown on by previous commenters:
– That it would require work by WMATA to hand over the data to Google
I will try to avoid making a snarky comment about how any “work” by WMATA makes the plan a nonstarter. (There are lots of hard-working folks at WMATA, and WMATA’s budget is squeezed pretty hard right now.) The bottom line is that it would take a trivial amount of work. As others have pointed out, the data already exist. To the extent WMATA has to generate or compile something, it’s already been done. Although it’s more complicated than sending an email, it’s not that much work.
– WMATA should get something in return
How about *providing some fucking service to WMATA customers*? I don’t mean to sound harsh, but WMATA exists to serve its customers, and its customers would benefit greatly from improved tools for how to navigate the Metro system. That also helps WMATA increase ridership, and get passengers through the system more efficiently. That’s what WMATA would get from sharing this data with Google (and with other organizations to companies like NextBus), and what it’s losing out on by refusing to share this information.
– Google Transit would compete with WMATA’s trip planner
From a consumer perspective, WMATA’s trip planner is hardly a competitor to Google transit in any real sense. It doesn’t even bother to incorporate maps — something that other sites (not just Google Transit) have been doing for ages, and which WMATA could have done 5+ years ago, with minimal efforts, had they chosen to do so. WMATA may think of itself as a competitor in the sense of competing for advertising dollars with Google Transit, and in that sense they are. And since they provide such an inferior product compared to Google’s (by which I mean the WMATA trip planner, not the actual transit service WMATA provides, which is decent), people looking to use just one site to access transit info would likely prefer Google Transit, so WMATA could lose out on some small share of ad revenue from the banner ads it sells on its trip planner. That seems a small price to pay to provide its customers with actual service.
December 16th, 2008 at 5:34 am
Google maps has some nice features, but graphically it is the worst of the bunch. Roads are overscaled relative to blocks, and as a result it has a bulbous quality that makes it harder to read. It hurts my eyes just thinking about it.
December 16th, 2008 at 9:29 am
Mapquest has a great feature allowing you to tell it to avoid a specific road when calculating the directions.
I tried Google walking directions and it appears to route people on roads even when trails (e.g. the Appalachian Trail) would provide a much safer, more scenic, and direct route. Still needs work.
December 16th, 2008 at 11:22 am
The city I live in has started using Google transit. So far, the routes it recommends are generally moronic. I use public transit every day and am familiar with the lines in my neighborhood. I would NEVER take the routes they recommend (One suggested I walk a half mile to another bus stop when one is located a block from my house, it also doesn’t recognize the light rail system which is seamlessly operated by the same company) so until Google transit is more accurate or offers more end user options, I am sticking with my paper route maps.
December 16th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
I’m curious about the reports of Google transit delivering markedly inferior results. It’s difficult for me to see what might be going on. (Unfortunately, the only city whose transit system I’m really familiar with is also the one that happens to be refusing to give Google data, so I’ve no way to compare.)
The only explanation I can see for some of it is that the transit agencies in question are providing Google with inferior or incomplete data. Like MzBitty’s comment about the light rail system schedule not being available. This also (sort of) explains George’s comment about Google not taking into account traffic patterns – presumably the schedules the transit agency gives to Google reflect real world performance (e.g., slower travel at rush hour), but maybe not in Seattle’s case? The data Google has is apparently not as good as the data Metro King County uses…
(Also, MzBitty, I’m assuming you are checking the alternate routes it lists? It’s possible Google thinks that at the exact time you check, walking a half mile will get you to your final destination 2 minutes faster than waiting at the stop out front, but it does list the alternatives.)
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I think you are thinking like sukrat, but I think you should cover the other side of the topic in the post too…
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