Google Transit isn't about Google

Transit

by David Alpert • January 8, 2009 3:06 pm

Technology writers and entrepreneurs talk about "innovation" a lot. It's a tough concept, though. For many people, the products and companies we can see and touch right now are easy to grasp, while the vague potential of people building new tools we can't conceive of today is less obvious.

iPhone transit directions in SF. Image from Trillium Solutions.

Professor Lawrence Lessig wrote in Newsweek about the FCC's failings. It's supposed to manage our airwaves and telecommunications systems to encourage more and easier communication. But in practice, it ends up regulating these systems to benefit the companies operating services today in ways that impede new people building new services tomorrow.

In a recent article in The Atlantic, writer Douglas McGray talks about San Francisco's experience releasing its schedule data for Google Transit:

Just a few days after Apple's iPhone launched, a trip planner for the San Francisco Bay Area's subway system, BART, appeared in the iTunes application store, which sells iPhone and iPod software for download. User reviews were mixed. But I was still floored. How could a local government agency move so quickly?
Turns out, it didn't. In 2007, Google engineers asked public-transit agencies across the country to submit their arrival and departure data in a simple, standard, open format—a text file, basically, with a bunch of numbers separated by commas—so Google Maps could generate bus and subway directions. A handful of agencies, including BART, decided to go a step further and publish that raw data online. Once they did that, any programmer could grab the data and write a trip planner, for any platform.
"It's not 1995," BART's Web-site manager, Timothy Moore, explained. "A single Web site is not the endgame anymore. People are planning trips on Google, they're using their iPhones. Because we opened up our schedule, we are in those places."
A couple weeks after that first BART application appeared, a new trip planner went live. This one, called iBART, was a thing of beauty. Free, too. It was written by two former high-school buddies—Ian Leighton, a sophomore at UC Berkeley, and David Hodge, a sophomore at the University of Southern California. Forty thousand people downloaded the program in just a few weeks.
"We've created competition among developers," Moore said, "to see who can serve our customers best."

Too bad Metro staff don't feel that way.

Metro General Manager John Catoe and Chief Administrative Officer Emeka Moneme told the WMATA board last month that they wanted to guarantee that any trip planner was up to the highest quality standards. But as McGray explained, the first BART trip planner for the iPhone had its flaws too. iPhone users didn't blame BART; they wrote their own, better trip planners.

Besides, the wmata.com trip planner isn't going to know about the special bus routes Metro plans for the Inauguration either. Metro staff are doing their best to adapt to quickly changing conditions, so I understand if it's impractical to fix the trip planner for this day. But Metro should not argue that the trip planner is perfect and anyone else's tool unreliable.

McGray continunes,

Last September, [BART's] Moore added a feed that broadcasts imminent train arrivals in real time. He's eager to see what people will do with it. "We can't envision every beneficial use for our data," Moore told me. "We don't have the time, we don't have the resources, and frankly, we don't have the vision. I'm sure there are people out there who have better ideas than we do. That's why we've opened it up."

Barack Obama seems to get this. DC's Office of the Chief Technology Officer gets this too. They've released lots of data knowing people will make all kinds of unexpected uses of it. Recently, I attended a meeting where someone suggested reaching out to houses of worship about a project in their area. Fortunately, there's a feed for that. Who knows what great tools and analyses people could devise if WMATA released feeds for station locations, schedules, bus routes, ridership numbers, and more.

Tips: Joshua S. and Michael Perkins.

Previously:

Metro refuses to participate in Google Transit
Metro responds; wanted money from Google Transit
Google Transit is not about the $68000, it's about openness
Metro endorses openness for schedule data
8 comments — Share — tags: BART, data openness, Emeka Moneme, Google, technology, WMATA
Related posts:
- Google Transit: What's in Metro's terms? (Jul 24, 2009)
- Where's Google Transit? (Jul 20, 2009)
- Metro "punts": Will release transit schedule data for Google and others (Mar 11, 2009)
- Metro responds; wanted money from Google Transit (Dec 16, 2008)
- Metro refuses to participate in Google Transit (Dec 13, 2008)

Comments

Does anyone know how often Google follows up with transit agencies to see if schedules have changed? The MTA has tinkered endlessly with the Baltimore Light Rail schedule since Google Transit Baltimore went live, but I don't think it's ever been updated at Google's end. Whose responsibility is that, from Google's perspective?

by jfruh on Jan 8, 2009 3:54 pm

Jfruh: It's up to the agency to update their feed.

by Michael Perkins on Jan 8, 2009 4:13 pm

"Protecting" us from all those dangerous outside vendors appears to be the driving force at WMATA. Nextbus? It's only a little more reliable than the printed schedule, so get rid of it and blame it on technical problems!

There is a fundamental conflict of interest here. The people whose jobs depend on government spending on one platform are the same that are deciding whether to allow competition.

by Reid on Jan 8, 2009 4:50 pm

"Google Transit isn't about Google"

I think you'd have better luck with this angle if this post and previous ones didn't feature Google so prominently. Try instead:

"Public release of Metro schedule data would spur innovation"

or even

"Public agencies should release public data"

With headlines like "Google Transit isn't about Google" and "Metro refuses to participate in Google Transit," one can be forgiven for thinking this is about Google. Your stance makes more sense to me after reading this post, but the headline definitely leads me astray, as did previous posts which kept emphasizing WMATA's position on Google. A better headline and angle on that last story would have been "WMATA refuses to release schedule data in accessible format."

Of course that ship has sailed but this might help you in the future.

by Omari on Jan 8, 2009 5:09 pm

Omari, the whole issue evolved because of WMATA's refusal to join Google Transit, after they said they would. So, people wanted to know why. Thus, thus became the 'Google Transit issue.'

As such, David references it as the Google Transit issue in this post, specifically showing how third parties have used that open information.

In short, mountain out of a mole hill here.

by Alex B. on Jan 8, 2009 5:23 pm

Yes, Omari brings up a mole hill, but he is right.

Otherwise, excellent post.

by Stephen on Jan 8, 2009 6:17 pm

Meanwhile, back to reality--

Metro officials are proposing to trim hundreds of jobs and make unprecedented cuts to rail and bus service as the transit agency grapples with the repercussions of a recession.

Metro General Manager John Catoe told the agency’s board of directors Thursday that the agency is facing a $176 million gap in the proposed $1.7 billion budget for next year

Examiner

by Jazzy on Jan 9, 2009 6:28 am

What action can people take to convince metro to see the light on google transit?

by whiskey bacon on Jan 14, 2009 10:54 pm