Friday 28 November 2008

Public transport navigation

Public transport path finding has many more factors than regular GPS navigation. For one, you need the locations of stops plus the routes and timetables of trains, buses, ferries and trams. The time of day becomes a factor, and you have to assume that people are walking between stops, which makes them slower, but more nimble (they can use alleys, paths, cut across parks and go the wrong way down one-way streets, but not along highways at all). Even if you find one route, you should provide alternatives in case the user misses it, or walks more slowly than your calculations allowed for. Considering all this, it's no wonder Google Maps is not yet offering that service. Besides all these difficulties, you need to get timetable and route information from local councils and operators into a usable format and keep them up to date too.

It might make sense to start working on the features as if that information were present, so that it can be filled in later, but you need the cooperation of public transport operators to make it work. Probably the best way to sell the idea to them is that they only need to maintain their timetables if they hand over the route finding task to Google.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The incentive to Google is more traffic, which means more ads.
PPS - And more ads for Google means more money.

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