Live Google transit directions change the value of transit
ideas.4brad.com
ideas.4brad.com
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.
As it turns out - many of the hurdles are non-technical, especially without many examples of pre-existing systems to base it off of.
There must be some tension between point to point service and having each passenger walk a few minutes, where the walking ends up saving time, even if it doesn't seem like it.
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.
- 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.
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/ [2] https://developers.google.com/transit/gtfs-realtime/
The TransXChange schema guide is a 300+ page PDF [3], so there is a big barrier to entry.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmodel [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TransXChange [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_Interface_for_Real_Time... [3] http://81.17.70.199/transxchange/schema/2.5/doc/TransXChange...
If you're a visitor accustomed to using Google Maps to navigate transit systems in a new city, the extensive tram and train network of Melbourne will be useless to you.
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:
Hoping to add additional tools for browsing / searching this data when I figure out how to make it all scale nicely.
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.
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.
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!
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.
I want a waze for buses that treats buses as an observation problem instead of a data-entry problem.
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.
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.)
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.
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.)
If people stop using Waze, wouldn't Google Transit become worse?