Didn't Google Transit display fare results at one point? I seem to recall when it first came out for BART (a Metro-like system with variable fares based on distance) that it would tell you how much your transit trip cost and actually compare it to driving costs! So there's nothing stopping them from adding that.

For the record, MTA Maryland was so thrilled to have Google Transit up and running for Baltimore (and MARC!) that they actually have a widget on the site's front page!

by jfruh on Dec 16, 2008 12:03 pm • link • report

Looking at this from Metro's perspective (if I'm understanding the points of contention correctly) I'm somewhat sympathetic to Metro. Why should Metro incur some non-trivial expense to transmit data to a 3rd party which they already make available to the public via their own website?

Though if there is sufficient public demand that they do so then it would be reasonable for them as a public entity to accommodate public demand.

by Steve on Dec 16, 2008 12:11 pm • link • report

Steve: Note that they didn't say it's expensive to send the data in their list of excuses. In fact, they originally couldn't get the data out of the system, but then figured it out, and now they can. The expense would be trivial.

by David Alpert on Dec 16, 2008 12:13 pm • link • report

David,

Why can't you let google do its own bidding? Google is massive force in cyberspace and provides some wonderful services. If the service is compelling WMATA will eventually relent and we will all be googling the bus.

Given your association with google, I think your rather persistant hammering on this particular issue is unseemly and tarnishes your credibility.

It's sorta like the Dick Cheney Haliburton thing. Even though Haliburton may have been the best provider of some services, the relationship was always tainted. You don't want wear the cheyney stink. Do you?

by Tom on Dec 16, 2008 12:31 pm • link • report

sort of like the Dick Cheney thing, except this is all about good will and helpfulness, and has nothing to do with making a profit.

by DG-rad on Dec 16, 2008 12:35 pm • link • report

Google Transit does indeed post fares for some transit systems. I checked and it works that way in the Bay Area and for Fairfax, VA bus system.

by Kevin Beekman on Dec 16, 2008 12:36 pm • link • report

WMATA built a data system that is proprietary and does not play well with others. Whether or not that was a sound business decision, is there a reason why WMATA is being asked to shoulder the burden of reformatting their data? This is not a trivial issue at all. For a proprietary system that generates real time transit data, the porting of that data will incur a significant cost.

If Google wants it, let them pay for it, since it becomes their product. THis is an issue for Metro Riders, since it will be our funds that are used to pay for this activity. It is not worth the cost, to me.

by Chuck on Dec 16, 2008 1:00 pm • link • report

And to be clear, the best solution for this issue is for WMATA to release a public port of their data, in some semblance of a standard format. Then, "Google or Future Inovators," can do whatever they want with it.

I signed the original petition to Google, because that is what it called for. THe Google response is reasonable though, and I don't support calls for WMATA to do whatever is necessary to make this happen.

by Chuck on Dec 16, 2008 1:06 pm • link • report

Maybe we should give WMATA more examples of benefits they aren't considering yet.

For example, Google Maps does driving directions really well. I always plan trips and compare mass transit with car driving.

Plenty of people use Google et al for driving directions, and if a potential transit user is looking up directions to get somewhere, it's almost like free advertising to have a Metro option presented with the driving directions.

Ms. Potential Transit User might not have considered Metro had it not been conveniently presented with all her other transit options in a place she already turns to for driving directions.

by James on Dec 16, 2008 1:06 pm • link • report

I get it is not about cost it is about revenue. WMATA wants to develop a special mobile app from this and make it available for Verizon, ATT, Sprint ect and charge a nice subscription fee for it. Sure the basic WMATA mobile will be free, but the spruced up helpful version will cost you. The only question I have is do I blame them?

by RJ on Dec 16, 2008 1:19 pm • link • report

Chuck-

Have you looked at the kind of data that's needed? The Google Transit website has a detailed spec of the format required, but basically it's just a somewhat more detailed and machine readable version of the information that's in a bus schedule.

This isn't rocket science. Whatever proprietary format WMATA's planner backend uses, it shouldn't take a programmer more than a couple of days to code a tool that'll pull that data out and map it to Google's format. It really is that trivial.

by jack lecou on Dec 16, 2008 1:33 pm • link • report

I can appreciate WMATA's revenue issues, but this is precisely why you can't run all government operations like a business.

Putting it plain and simple, WMATA has an obligation to make using their system easy. Trying to squeeze revenue out of that basic ridership information when there are really useful alternatives out there is contrary to that mission.

by Alex B. on Dec 16, 2008 1:45 pm • link • report

Alex B., send that in to all to the Metro e-mail addresses.

by Mary on Dec 16, 2008 2:00 pm • link • report

Gosh, I hate to say I told you so.

http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post.cgi?id=1495#comment-15572

"It's nice to be vindicated" has a better ring.

by John on Dec 16, 2008 2:20 pm • link • report

Reading between the lines here, Metro is hungry for cash anywhere it can be found. Perhaps they were hoping to get Google to pony up some cash for it, or hoping that the public outcry would allow them to create a protected budget line that wouldn't get axed in some sort of cost-cutting measure.

Is WMATA being stingy with what is essentially public data? Yes, but the one thing that makes WMATA different from all those other transit agencies is that it doesn't have a dedicated and dependable source of funding.

-Phil

by Phil Lepanto on Dec 16, 2008 2:21 pm • link • report

Phil, many transit agencies don't have a dedicated and dependable source of funding. MTA, for example, is struggling just as publicly to plug its budget gaps, yet apparently did not regard a relationship with Google as a potential source of revenue.

by JS on Dec 16, 2008 2:31 pm • link • report

The MTA does have a dedicated source of funding. WMATA is the only major transit agency without one.

by Cavan on Dec 16, 2008 2:40 pm • link • report

I eagerly await WMATA's coming attempt to charge for printed bus schedules.

by jack lecou on Dec 16, 2008 3:01 pm • link • report

So... does that mean WMATA is paying regional transit companies for their data?

by Mark on Dec 16, 2008 3:03 pm • link • report

I believe there is a very important distinction to make here: Google Transit is great because "everyone uses it", sure, but it is also better capable of interfacing with all the other transit agencies. If it were Yahoo Transit or Mapquest Transit, I would be calling for the same thing.

Additionally, WMATA doesn't necessarily need more riders right now, but they do need more money. I can see the logic in holding out hoping for some cash. The problem here is that if other places were giving them proper funding, this might not be an issue.

by Dave Murphy on Dec 16, 2008 3:15 pm • link • report

WMATA doesn't necessarily need more riders right now, but they do need more money. I can see the logic in holding out hoping for some cash.

I'm not sure I see the logic of that. The marginal cost of an additional rider is quite low, so more riders IS more money. Especially in this case, because the type of riders Google transit would encourage are mostly off-peak (tourists, errand runners, etc. - commuters don't need to look up routes much).

by jack lecou on Dec 16, 2008 3:26 pm • link • report

Good point jack, this is a great for the off peak rider and there is plenty of excess capacity at those times.

by Erik on Dec 16, 2008 3:58 pm • link • report

I don't want to add insult to injury, but I just noticed that Charlottesville, VA was added to the Google transit list. I've been asking for this for the last several months, and its nice to see it up there now.

by Daniel Nairn on Dec 16, 2008 5:03 pm • link • report

If the service is compelling WMATA will eventually relent and we will all be googling the bus.

Thanks, Tom. That made me laugh out loud.

Yes, but the one thing that makes WMATA different from all those other transit agencies is that it doesn't have a dedicated and dependable source of funding.

It depends on what you mean by a dedicated and dependable source of funding. One of the requirements for Metro to get $1.5 billion in funds from the Federal Government over the next ten years was to secure a dedicated source of funding. They got what they needed to meet this requirement. No transit agency in the country has a dependable source of funding. They all rely on fares and some sort of public support, which are both subject to fluctuations. In some ways, Metro is in a better position than many transit agencies, as it has contractual arrangements with four jurisdictions (DC, MD, US, VA) to contribute to the costs of operating and maintaining the system.

by Stanton Park on Dec 16, 2008 6:24 pm • link • report

@jack -- In a couple of days, I could write a perl script that would produce the Google Transit files by brute force by downloading all of the bus routes from the WMATA website and parsing them. It shouldn't take someone on the inside with access to the raw data more than a few hours.

by Sweth on Dec 16, 2008 8:12 pm • link • report

The taxpayers ALREADY PAID Metro to develop its schedule database. The database does not belong to Metro. It belongs to the people. The people should derive any benefit they can from it.

by Turnip on Dec 16, 2008 8:51 pm • link • report

Sweth: Can you point me to a page that has bus route data to parse? The timetables don't have every stop, just a few. There's no comprehensive list of bus stops. And to scrape data out of the trip planner data, you'd have to issue tens of thousands of different queries even if you had all the bus stops. That might lead WMATA to start blocking your IP, if their site has any halfway decent protection against DOS attacks.

by David Alpert on Dec 16, 2008 8:59 pm • link • report

Google couldn't display fares on their site.

Not true. Other transit agencies have their fares displayed properly on the site. What Google could not do was display the time-based fares that WMATA uses for Metrorail. Either the regular fares or the reduced fares could be displayed, but I don't see anything in the Google Transit Feed Specification that supports different fares for peak and off-peak.

by Michael Perkins on Dec 16, 2008 10:51 pm • link • report

James hits the nail on the head about trip planning. David, is there a way to find out the number of people in the Metro watershed who use Google for driving directions every day? That is our target audience, and safe to assume it is a growing audience. Providing those people with a simple way to see a transit alternative would be an effective way to boost transit. And I wonder what is the comparison between the number of people who use Google for driving directions vs. Metro's trip planner?

I can't imagine what the costs are to Metro of converting their data and perhaps there are creative ways to solve that problem. But Google is providing a valuable marketing opportunity for free, and providing our region with a critical educational tool.

by Hans Riemer on Dec 17, 2008 7:57 am • link • report

Hans makes a great point about expanding the reach and promotion of "getting there" by transit through the numbers of google searches for directions within WMATA's service area. It's a great positive way to spin it to WMATA rather than harping on something negative. "Look at this, all these people are looking for directions in your service area each day, wouldn't you like to give them the alternative to see how they could do it on a WMATA service?"

by Steve Davis on Dec 17, 2008 12:20 pm • link • report

David -- You're correct that the timetables don't include all of the stops, and that there could be logistical issues involved in brute-force generation of the files from the outside, but that misses my point: I wasn't saying that generating the files that way was practical, but just that it was very easy from a coding POV, and that it should be even easier for someone with access to the raw data to generate the files.

(Also, for what it's worth, it wouldn't be too hard to have a bot run a bunch of queries against the trip planner once, to generate a list of most/all of the stops, and then it would be fairly trivial to interpolate the times for those stops based on the times given in the timetable PDFs.)

by Sweth on Dec 17, 2008 10:48 pm • link • report

Sweth: It's probably even easier to receive the information through a public access to records policy (PARP) request. I have already requested the information and should probably receive it shortly after the new year. I will put it up online somewhere if I receive anything.

by Michael Perkins on Dec 17, 2008 11:11 pm • link • report

I think Metro should be commended for trying to find new sources of revenue. That said, the main source of revenue after government subsidies is fares, and WMATA must do all it can to increase ridership. Allowing Google to fully integrate Metro bus and rail into its maps will make the system that much easier for everyone to use, increasing ridership. Metro, I'm sure, has spent lots of money on its Web site redesign (what happened to the online shop?), but it needs to step back and look at the big picture here.

by Cary O'Reilly on Dec 18, 2008 6:32 am • link • report

Addressing WMATA's first two concerns:

1. Google Transit has the ability to show far info. SF shows fare info - the agencies just have to provide the data - sf agencies have, apparently.

2. I don't know the details of Ride-On and ART, but if they're just transit agencies with their own schedules, then they just need their data made available in addition to WMATA data - done.

There was a session at TransitCamp2 where the Google Transit guys talked with other folks about 'Events' to handle real-time delays, etc. I know BART does RSS feeds and twitter updates with near-real-time delay information. I suspect Google Transit folks are tinkering, at least in their spare time, with the correct architecture to make this happen.

http://barcamp.org/TransitCampBayArea

by Peter on Dec 24, 2008 3:33 am • link • report