LA Metro Now on Google Maps - Use with Caution
Sunday July 5, 2009
I was very excited to hear that LA Metro train and bus routes have now been incorporated into Google Maps, following the example of OCTA (Orange County Transit Authority), whose routes have been on Google Maps for a while, and other public transit systems around the world. This is a great advancement, especially for tourists who would like to depend on public transportation to get around. It actually works better than the Metro website to calculate a route from here to there.
The only problem is that the other 20 public transit systems that serve Greater Los Angeles are not incorporated. So if the most direct route is via a LADOT (LA Dept of Transit) bus or Metrolink train, you're out of luck. In fact, when plugging in a route from Belmont Shore in Long Beach to an address in Bixby Knolls about 5 miles away, the Google Maps public transportation route takes 2.5 hours via Seal Beach, Norwalk, and Lynwood before coming back to Long Beach. It includes 2 buses and a Metro train. I could walk it faster, or take 2 Long Beach Transit buses, which takes 15 to 30 minutes.
The best option I've found for planning trips on public transportation is http://socaltransport.org, which now incorporates multiple transit systems. It's not perfect. It doesn't include all 20 systems, but it's the best I've seen so far, and can route you from a Santa Monica bus to a Metrolink train to an Orange County bus, if necessary. Unfortunately, it doesn't show you the route on a map, so you can't really see if it's the most direct route. It also doesn't seem to include LADOT buses, but since LADOT doesn't even have an online trip planner for their own buses, it's hard for anyone to incorporate them into an online system.
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The only problem is that the other 20 public transit systems that serve Greater Los Angeles are not incorporated. So if the most direct route is via a LADOT (LA Dept of Transit) bus or Metrolink train, you're out of luck. In fact, when plugging in a route from Belmont Shore in Long Beach to an address in Bixby Knolls about 5 miles away, the Google Maps public transportation route takes 2.5 hours via Seal Beach, Norwalk, and Lynwood before coming back to Long Beach. It includes 2 buses and a Metro train. I could walk it faster, or take 2 Long Beach Transit buses, which takes 15 to 30 minutes. The best option I've found for planning trips on public transportation is http://socaltransport.org, which now incorporates multiple transit systems. It's not perfect. It doesn't include all 20 systems, but it's the best I've seen so far, and can route you from a Santa Monica bus to a Metrolink train to an Orange County bus, if necessary. Unfortunately, it doesn't show you the route on a map, so you can't really see if it's the most direct route. It also doesn't seem to include LADOT buses, but since LADOT doesn't even have an online trip planner for their own buses, it's hard for anyone to incorporate them into an online system.
More:
If my understanding of the process is correct, I believe the other systems, such as, Long Beach, Culver City, the Big Blue Bus, etc., need to submit their information to Google. Then they will be included.
Hopefully, now that Metro is live, the other systems will follow suit.
Yes Lisa, that’s exactly right. It took Metro over a year to finally give the go ahead for Google to incorporate their schedule, and the others are apparently still dragging their feet.
There seems to be a concern that cooperating with Google Maps will reduce their chance of earning hypothetical income from their own websites in the future.
I think the increased ridership from people being able to find the correct routes would more than make up for ad revenue they haven’t even gotten around to generating yet. Don’t you?