Are Google's estimate public transit times for Hong Kong way off?

August 10, 2013 12:40 PM

Google Maps' estimates of travel times using the MTR in HK vary wildly from the MTR's own webpage. Ie from Tin Hau to University station, Google says 1hr 24mins incl walking time to Tin Hau, which is maybe 10 mins tops. MTR website says 44 mins for the same journey, not incl walking to station obviously. This discrepancy repeats itself across various planned journeys. Who should I trust?
posted by modernnomad to Travel & Transportation around Hong Kong (7 answers total)

Google Maps' estimates may include waiting for transportation to arrive. Is that something that you can factor in?

If you look at the break down of time, how do individual legs of the trip compare?
posted by Lady Li at 1:23 PM on August 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

It's possible. The Google Maps trip planner for Japan is terrible, likely because they don't have access to the same databases that they might in North America. Probably the same for HK.
posted by KokuRyu at 5:21 PM on August 10, 2013

Google maps trip planner doesn't know about transfers at the transit station in my US town, making many trips appear to take 30 minutes longer than they should. The correct plan would involve waiting about 3 minutes at the station to transfer. I think Google might not allow transfers of less than 5 minutes, so it requires waiting for the next bus. I'd go with the local information.
posted by SandiBeech at 7:02 PM on August 10, 2013

In my (extensive) personal experience, the MTR's travel time estimates are accurate.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 5:11 PM on August 11, 2013

What's the route that it's suggesting from Tin Hau?

Tin Hau -> Admiralty (switch to red) -> Yau Ma Tei (switch to green) -> Kowloon Tong (switch to blue) -> University?

In my experience 44 minutes just for the train portion of that ride seems a bit optimistic. I'd budget about an hour for just the ride especially since East Rail Line trains tend to be a bit more infrequent.

If it's telling you Tin Hau -> North Point (switch to purple) -> Yau Tong (switch to green) -> Kowloon Tong then I'm not sure, almost never take the MTR in that direction.

My favorite route when I had to do that commute was to find a cross-tunnel bus that takes you to Hung Hom and then take the blue line there to University. I traveled from CWB instead of Tin Hau but it shouldn't be much different.
posted by C^3 at 9:43 PM on August 11, 2013

Response by poster: Somebody else recommended the cross-tunnel bus too - how long would that journey be?
posted by modernnomad at 6:40 AM on August 12, 2013

From Causeway Bay I would usually budget an hour and fifteen minutes door to door. For just the public transportation bit that'd be about an hour? There's a bit more variability since the bus times are more erratic and sometimes you can hit a nasty snarl of traffic in the tunnel but the commute was IMO easier because you didn't have to make so many changes.

Also the red-green and green-blue transfers can get congested even during non rush-hour periods.
posted by C^3 at 1:24 AM on August 13, 2013