How Google Is Remapping Public Transportation

waderoush writes "Google wants to 'organize the world's information,' but there isn't a marketplace or a category of knowledge it can organize without remaking it in the process. A case in point: public transportation. Largely outside the media spotlight, Google has wrought a quiet revolution over the last five years in the way commuters get schedule information for local buses and trains, and the way public transit agencies communicate with their riders. GTFS and GTFS-realtime, which Google invented, have become the de facto world standards for sharing transit data, and have opened up space for a whole ecosystem of third-party transit app developers. This in-depth article looks at the history of GTFS and Google's efforts to give people information (largely via their smartphones) that can help them plan their commutes on public transportation — and, not incidentally, drive a lot less."

Comments

Do you realize that it's Google that is doing it?

[Taco Cowboy]

Not that long ago people were lamenting loudly that Google was EVIL

To those who say Google is EVIL :

Are you sure you want to let Google do this?

Why don't you get Facebook and/or Yahoo and/or Microsoft to do this instead?

Re:Multi-Modal Trip Planning

[Archangel Michael]

That, and lives in Ivory Tower of "Theory", and not "Reality". That is something my dad taught me when I was young, "In theory, theory and practice are the same, in practice, they are not".

Taking a car ride, via rented car and paying for gas is cheaper and faster than taking transit system to my mom's house. And by faster, I mean from 9 hours driving, to nearly 48 hours of traveling (no beds). We don't have good transportation system besides Cars and really fast trains (called Airplanes), except in a few cities (Chicago, NY/NJ, SF to name a few). And those only work well if you live or are staying in them.

Luckly, I don't live in crowded city and my daily commute is maybe 7 minutes. Oh, and by bus it would take about 2 hours and three connections to get close. I can walk to work faster than mass transit.