Know when your bus is late with live transit updates in Google Maps

Wednesday, June 8, 2011 | 4:00 AM


(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog)

Often when I’m taking public transit, I arrive at my stop on time only to anxiously check my watch and look down the street for my bus, which is running late once again. Those extra minutes I’m forced to wait seem like an eternity, and the only information I can access on my phone is when the bus was supposed to arrive.

Starting now, Google Maps for mobile and desktop can tell you when your ride is actually going to arrive with new live transit updates. We partnered with transit agencies to integrate live transit data in four U.S. cities and two European cities: Boston, Portland, Ore., San Diego, San Francisco, Madrid and Turin.



When you click on a transit station or plan a transit route with Google Maps and there are delays or alerts related to your trip, you’ll now see “live departure times” (indicated with a special icon) and service alerts.



Live transit departure times after tapping on a station



Live service alerts when receiving transit directions



Live departures and alerts on desktop


We’re working with our public transit partners to help them provide live data to more people in more cities. You can get live transit updates in the latest version of Google Maps for mobile (requires Android 1.6+), as well as Google Maps on all supported desktop and mobile browsers.

22 comments:

Brock said...

London as well please! Transport for London makes a lot of this data available through APIs.

drhappy said...

pleeeeeeeeeeeeease wire up the ttc in toronto, on, canada!

Miami305guy said...

please Add Miami Dade Transit and Broward county Florida transit.

Chin said...

GET ON IT SEPTA!

ramon said...

and add DC too !!

Paul said...

Don't worry about adding Zurich - there's no need.

A-lo said...

My dream mapping & transit feature! DC pronto please.

FarooqPSK said...

When is in INDIA?

Andres said...

NYC Much Needed....... Great Job N Keep It Up Google

kinos said...

Great innovance !! and now in Madrid !!co

pd:Salu2,ADSL VODAFONE.

ofra said...

such a great idea, can save so much time. Is it working in London already?

Digorgom said...

When it will be possible for Moscow, Russia?

tubesteak said...

Nice to see this here in Portland. Too bad there is a long-standing bug that prevents one from being able to click on a transit station while the 'Bicycling' layer is active. After turning on the cycle paths layer, the map icons start behaving erratically. Most business icons, landmarks, and transit stations become 'unclickable'.

tubesteak said...

I should have specified that my issue occurs in the mobile Maps app for Android, I have not experienced issues with the desktop web app.

enotswhat said...

any chance we can set up a trip planner using the transit mode? Not just a A to B but A to B to C To A etc...?

Christopher Gutteridge said...

Southampton's doing it for ourselves; http://opendatamap.ecs.soton.ac.uk/

Click bus stops for times.

All data available as .json and .rdf

Anonymous said...

Any news on this coming to the UK?

Quinn said...

This would be great if it actually worked, but I am in SF and only see scheduled departures on my desktop and on my Android phone. No live departures as of yet. What a tease!

Pixel Buffer said...

A very similar thing exists for Chicago: ctabustracker.com. It even plots little bus icons moving around the map. You can also get bus arrival info by text message. Google should be able to integrate this info into Maps, eh?

Scottie said...

i did see some mobile ads that there is a new scheme for london for the Olympics but i dont know whether it is going ahead with the spending cuts. anyone got any ideas.

Marcus Tucker said...

If only London was included - full data for all TFL services is readily available, please integrate it soon!

Anonymous said...

We all know the public transit story: everyone’s unhappy for whatever reason they choose as “topic of the month,” but this time around though, I found something a tad more interesting, and that’s Bombardier’s latest multibillion dollar victory. Maybe I’m just a sucker for corporate drama, but this may be worth a glance for you as well: http://www.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/showlink.aspx?bookmarkid=LH6VO8R7RKC1&preview=article&linkid=f304d9c0-23d7-4a4a-8941-4885a2d11ee2&pdaffid=ZVFwBG5jk4Kvl9OaBJc5%2bg%3d%3d

In any case, enjoy :)