Manifest Destiny has an interesting and technical post about the struggle to get WMATA (Washington, D.C.) transit data loaded into Google Transit.  Basically, Metro wanted to make sure riders got fare information and so on, which they can do on the agency site but not on Google.  More importantly, there was some wrangling about who would pay for the labor to convert all the data into Google’s format.

This all has little to do with Seattle-area transit, except that it lays out what has to happen for Community Transit or Pierce Transit to get into the database.  I’m sure someone out there is industrious enough to take all the route data and convert it into GTFS format.

Via Megan McArdle.

9 Replies to “Google Transit Requirements”

  1. I’ve seen similar behavior from government bureaucracies before, where officials are angry/upset that a private company is competing against them and creating a better website and experience. It comes along with defensive statements such as, “We’ve already got our system and it works great, why would anyone create a new system?” There are two obvious reasons, either A. the government designed system isn’t as great as the bureaucrats believe it is, and B. the newer system benefits from network effects when combing data from multiple agencies. Reading that post, it looks like they are afraid of giving their users choice, because they’d choose Google. How petty.

    1. In DC Metro’s defense, I don’t think it was all pettiness. They actually have a working Trip Planner that is pretty nice and tailored to their transit system. While adding Google Transit would be great, it’s work/time/money for DC Metro to convert their transit database into GTFS and then Google is the one collecting the spoils/ad revenue.

      Secondly, DC Metro was demanding the ability to publish real-time updates of reroutes, closures, etc. GTFS and Google Transit by extension are really better designed for large monthly updates for periodic service revisions of data that will be static for most of the time. GTFS is not really designed to handle temporary modifications.

      I think GTFS is nice because it is a common schema of transit data. OneBusAway, fro example, uses GTFS internally. However, I really think some secondary schema for temporary updates / revisions needs to be agreed upon.

      Ideally, all the updates at http://transit.metrokc.gov/up/rr/adverseweather.html that we all have to decipher manually could just be published in this format so that downsteam services like MyBus and OneBus could automatically update. Magical, dream world, I know.

  2. And off topic, but did anyone see that Seattle Times article about solar panels on the roof of Qwest Field Events Center? It’s implying that solar panels on the events center are as ridiculous as the federal government paying for a waterslide in Florida or a polar bear exhibit in Delaware… The Seattle Times needs to catch up with the rest of the world.

    1. Wow, and all of the commenters on the Seattle Times site agree that the project would be either an extreme waste of money, or just a bad idea.

  4. The “ready to shovel” list is up on the SeattleTimes website, and WA state’s request start at page 220 and run to 226. A lot of small item projects that only someone deep on the bowels of city government would be aware of…but there is money for King Street Station, completing Burke-Gilman, and Amtrak upgrades.

    Nothing major for transit, that I can tell.

    Perhaps these grants weren’t the channel; between ST, 520, the viaduct, and a half dozen streetcar line proposals, King County can use every penny it can get…from somewhere in the stimulas proposal.

    What’s striking is just how small this list is…what about those old pipes that keep busting in U-District and the rest of the city? I was kind of expecting funds for major projects….something landmark, like “Replace entire city water system” or “Quake-proof every bridge in Western Washington” etc. Instead it’s mostly “kiosks and signage” or “solar panels for hot water in Ballard pool”, which made me laugh out loud. Or “hire nine more police officers in 2009”; I guess that’s the jobs portion (sorry, not usually this cynical).

    1. Keep in mind this is the list from the US Conference of Mayors so it tends to be fairly dominated by cities. It’s not the only list of projects that is being send to the feds. This doesn’t include any requests from states, counties or local transit agencies.

  5. Before you get too excited about adding GTFS feeds for these other transit agencies, note that Google typically only accepts feeds from the transit agencies themselves.

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