December 13, 2008
WMATA On Google Transit: "Not In Our Best Interest"
The Red Line was an utter mess this last week. Track work caused delays of up to 30 minutes in many places last weekend. A fire on Friday at the Friendship Heights station backed trains up during the morning rush hour. And DCist's staff email threads were filled on Monday and Tuesday with complaints about Red Line trains being backed up for one reason or another, for reasons that remain to be discovered.
It's information-deprived situations like these that lead people to wonder: What's taking so long with that Google Transit integration with WMATA that we've been promised over and over and over again?
According to a report by Greater Greater Washington blogger Michael Perkins, the deal's off: a Metro spokesperson says that "forming a partnership with Google was not in our best interest from a business perspective." Wait, back up?
After months and months of saying that Google integration was imminent, Metro now believes that its brand new website serves up just as much information as a relationship with Google would. Far from it. True, the new WMATA Web site is better looking and offers an improved interface. But what about bus routing? One of the bigger disappointments with Metro's online upgrade is that bus schedules are still rendered in bulky PDFs. On Google Transit, it takes mere seconds to find the right bus schedule and routing. Google might have taken over the role of the similarly stalled NextBus system, but that isn't in the cards, either.
Like Greater Greater Washington says, this action is yet another example of Metro withholding the intel from its customers:
For a long time, WMATA has said they're "working on it." Unfortunately, they recently told us that they've decided not to participate at all. This is a very shortsighed decision for WMATA. The easier it is for people to find out about their transit options, the more people will ride transit. Keeping the data restricted, whether in a misguided attempt to coerce people into using WMATA's new site or for any other reason, only hurts riders . . .. . . Google Transit can add new features much faster than WMATA ever could. WMATA's core competency is running trains and buses, which it performs quite well; Google's is building Web sites.
That text is part of the preface to a petition to allow area residents to email WMATA to register their opinions about WMATA's decision. Greater Greater Washington blogger David Alpert told DCist that response to the call for action has been impressive: At least 50 responses were registered in the first few hours since the form letter's publication early Saturday morning. Metro riders seem to want Google capability, Metro's new Web site notwithstanding.
Looking at the list of jurisdictions participating in Google Transit is dispiriting. Most American metropolitan areas, the nations of Japan and Switzerland, and wherever Walla Walla is: they've all integrated with Google T. To save negligible time and money, Metro scuttled a collaboration to match the unprecedented growth of and demand on the system.
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Just because the Valley Transit isn't as awesome as WMATA doesn't mean that you have to pick on it...
The Valley Transit is Walla Walla's (barely extant) public transit system. In case you wanted to know, Walla Walla is in south-eastern Washington state.*
* Full disclosure: I'm from WW.
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I always WMATA mobile quite useful and accurate for buses and trains.
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Allow me to point to exhibit A: wmata.com
It's newly redesigned.
It sucks.
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Surely WMATA schedules are public, aren't they? Why does WMATA have to cooperate with Google, can't Google just grab the public data off the site and do whatever they want with it?
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Garlic: Google asks that transit agencies package their data in an XML format called "Google Transit Feed Specification". There are translation software packages that will work to translate from WMATA's Trapeze database into GTFS.
Google won't post on Google Transit unless an agreement is signed between the agency and Google. I think it was at that stage that WMATA started to balk.
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It's sort of ironic that Japan's public transportation information is one of the few international locations available on Google transit -- considering that Yahoo! is beating out Google by leaps and bounds over in the land of the rising sun (and a lot of cell phone users look up transport schedules using special service provider-specific applications anyway).
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Translation: we have yet to find a way to turn this into a 37 gigabyte Acrobat file.
WMATA needs to step back and literally F**K ITS OWN FACE.
We do not negotiate with terrorists.
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Regarding Japan, check out one of the most amazing private websites over here: jorudan.co.jp/english/
Punch in something like "Meidaimae to Kawagoe" to see the level of complexity and information it offers: no bus, but all subways, private rails, bullet trains, even airplanes. When I come back to the US and use the public trans, I want to weep.
Oh, and it's available on your cellphone, too. With last train route-mapping and prices home from the bar. AMERICA?!!!!!!!
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As someone who rides the Red Line every weekday, I can tell you that it was indeed messed up this past week. Trains were super-crowded. Service on the Red Line is never great, but this week seemed to be pushing the limits of the system.
Regarding schedules: do Metro trains operate on a schedule? I would have a hard time believing that they do. I ride from Shady Grove into the city, and trains never depart that station on any kind of set interval. Basically as soon as a train arrives, it fills with people and departs. Occasionally they will bring up a new train from the yard, but that's rather rare.
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WMATA doing something that is ignorant, arrogant, and shortsighted? No way, it can't be!
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the thing is, you can see maps of a lot of bus routes right now on the nextbus website showing live, updated locations of each of the buses on the route, and what time they should make it to each stop.
i'm looking at the map for the G2 bus right now, and it's showing (at 11:00 a.m.) a bus at the howard terminus, an eastbound bus a P and 22nd, and a westbound bus at P and 16th.
why isn't this information being integrated onto google transit's site?
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why isn't this information being integrated onto google transit's site?
Because they're f***ing idiots.
Go to their precious website and try and find something REALLY complicated like which bus leaves ANY Metro station. What do you see? A link to a useless Acrobat file. You have a system that's capable of delivering real-time data and all they're using it for is to push stale, dead Acrobat files that were generated from a Word document.
All I want to know is which bus leaves which station, and they can't even deliver that. Why? Because none of these overpaid c***suckers even USES THE FREAKING METRO, let alone will they defile their precious buttocks by taking a bus.
Now, I'm not saying these bootlicking toadies should be rounded up and sent to re-education camps where their bones can be ground up into fertilizer, but....
Sorry, I don't know how to end that sentence.
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More and more with each and every day, Metro makes me want to stab myself in the head for not having a car.
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Thanks, fromcali. What's even more amazing about sites like that is that the network in Tokyo consists of public and private train and subway lines. Not only is all the information integrated online, but it's pretty easy to transfer between them as well. Oh, and the trains/subways actually run on time... most the time. If only metro were even half as punctual.
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@ out_on_an_island
It's probably best to say Metrorail tries to keep to a schedule.
Metro does post rail schedules, but just not for rush hours. I know Chicago and NYC will at least tell you the interval of trains during peak hours, rather than using tons of space to show every schedule. Instead, Metro just tells us:
"Due to the high frequency of service, timetables for peak hours (weekdays 5-9:30 a.m. and 3-7 p.m.) are not available."
During rush hour on the red line it just becomes the race to turn around the trains the quickest, then worry about keeping them 2-4 min apart with the Grosvenor/Silver Spring trains once they're running again.
As for keeping to the posted off-peak schedule, of the few late nights I actually remembered to check the schedule before leaving, the train was almost on time (+1-2 min).
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Well, of course this happened. Google is a successful company, and WMATA is just another piece of failure.
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I woulda said "a load of fetid dingo's kidneys" but, yeah, "piece of failure" works, too.