I'm pretty much fucked without Google Transit.

February 9, 2009 12:20 PM

When will Google Transit reflect the recent updates to the Maryland Transit Administration (Baltimore) schedules?

I've been using Google Transit via Maps on my iPhone religiously to get around Baltimore (as a car-less student). Since recent updates have taken place, effective yesterday (as reported by the MTA website), Google Transit cannot provide directions anywhere, however Baltimore/MTA is still listed as a supported transportation service on the list of cities.

Any idea of how long I will be waiting for Google and the MTA to communicate schedules and I will be able to utilize it again?

posted by Asherah to travel & transportation (3 comments total)

It's up to the city to provide all schedules to Google, so you could call your local MTA office and ask them.
posted by halogen at 12:24 PM on February 9

As a Washingtonian I pay a lot of attention to how Google Transit works because we do not have it here due to WMATA being incredibly dense and anti end user as far as their information goes.

That being said my impression of how it works is that Google just needs to get the information in a format that their software can digest. How this works in the real world is that many transit agencies publish their routs and fare in this format online (lets assume its .csv, but it is probably something a little more specific than that) and it is open to anyone to make use of that as they will. Google harvests this data and inputs it into transit and voila you have an accessible format on your phone.

So if you are really pressed do what halogen says, but I would assume its already online, and Google will digest it within the next few days at most.

Stupid WMATA...
posted by BobbyDigital at 1:22 PM on February 9

You can e-mail the MTA, but my experience is that they are not responsive at all. I e-mailed them on 5 different schedule goofs within a week of MTA going google, and not one of them is fixed yet.

Maybe you could get your delegate on them?

The new paper MTA maps are horrible, too. The map is so small I can't really read it with my glasses.
posted by QIbHom at 8:33 AM on February 11