Will the MTA get on board with Google Transit? Maybe, officials say

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There may be some movement on the is-Google-Transit-ever-coming-to-Los Angeles front: testing could begin in the first half of 2009, says a key official with the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Google Transit is the popular service that allows users to easily plan and map trips on mass transit. With the cooperation of transit agencies, Google Transit has posted bus and/or train schedules for New York, Chicago, San Francisco, San Diego, Sacramento, Seattle, Denver, Atlanta, Miami, Dallas, Cleveland, Minneapolis and Pittsburgh. Click on the above map and you can see how Google Transit may help someone navigate a trip from Columbia University in New York City to the Union Square Cafe.

What do all those cities have in common? They're all big cities -- kind of like Los Angeles is a big city!

But, thus far, the MTA remains missing on Google Transit. Instead, the MTA has three online trip planners: its regular trip planner, a test version of the trip planner that has schedules for dozens of transit agencies in L.A. County, and a program that allows cellphone users to see how long until the next rapid bus arrives.

All three also have shortcomings. The regular planner can be fickle (unless you really dig long bus trips) and neither the regular nor test versions of the planner recognizes the name of a business as your present location (Google Transit usually does). And the rapid bus program provides schedules only for some stops.

Matt Raymond, the chief communications officer for the MTA, said he thought a pilot program with Google Transit could happen soon, but that the agency was still not firmly committed to a permanent relationship with Google even after months of talks between the two.

"I guess the bottom line is we want to provide our customers the best possible service," Raymond said. "Google is a for-profit entity, and we have to make sure that we have solid policies in how we give public information out."

Raymond said that the MTA still needed to resolve several issues. Among them are finding a way to provide frequent schedule updates to Google and finding a way to ensure that Google is providing MTA customers with accurate information about the best way to get from Point A to Point B.

The other big issue is the MTA's willingness to surrender publicly owned data, albeit data that has to be specially formatted by the MTA for use by Google. Raymond said that the trip planner feature on the MTA website gets up to 40 million hits a month, making it the most popular feature on the site. "It's a valuable tool and it's a main driver to our website," Raymond said. "If we want to use it as a future revenue stream, we don't know the impact of having all the information on a different system."

In other words, the MTA is considering putting advertising on its website, which is currently free of it. The trip planner generates the page views that could lure advertisers for the perpetually cash-strapped agency. Of course, the agency isn't quite as cash-strapped as it was Nov. 3, the day before 67.93% of voters approved a 30-year half-cent-on-the-dollar sales tax hike expected to generate $30 billion to $40 billion for MTA and Caltrans projects.

In the meantime, OCTA in Orange County already has its bus schedules on Google Transit, as does the Burbank bus system. Metrolink went live on G.T. this month, and Big Blue Bus officials in Santa Monica say they're working on putting their bus info on G.T. too, but that their data is tied up with another vendor at the moment, an issue that must first be resolved.

The next big agency to go live on G.T. is likely to be Foothill Transit, one of the largest bus agencies in Los Angeles County.

"We've been in beta testing since August ,and we're almost done and we're hoping to be up and online with Google Transit in January or February," said Felicia Friesema, the spokeswoman for Foothill Transit. "We're really excited about it, and we're hoping that more transit agencies get on board because Google Transit in Los Angeles County will only be as good as the number of agencies that are on it."

With the holidays upon us, it's likely that many people will soon be unwrapping new smartphones that easily access the Internet and all its bells and whistles. If transit ridership remains high and gas prices spike, it will be mighty interesting to see whether consumers begin clamoring for a wider variety of transit information.

--Steve Hymon

Comments

[Robert 'Groby' Blum]

"Solid policies", indeed. It's data that by all rights should be *publicly* accessible, and free of any copyright encumbrances. It's paid for with taxpayer money, after all...

And Metro is really not getting the benefit of that - People were trying to build a website that had a better trip planner long before Google Transit. Any tech geek in L.A. who takes the bus wouldn't hesitate to take a stab at this, for free - if the data was publicly available.

[Randy]

Not only does it not cover all the rapid lines, the cell phone rapid bus "next bus" service rarely works. The more-often-than-not response is "data not available". And the link to it is literally five levels down from the top page, it is not linked to the regular trip planner or that aweful NextTrip thing. What a total waste of time and money - does anyone in that Metro buiding talk to each other? The regular trip planner is OK once you become an expert user, but its not Google Transit, and definitely not user friendly to anyone other than "regulars". The option of taking transit shouldn't be an inside joke. Too bad the joke is on Los Angeles.

[KateNonymous]

MTA's cellphone program doesn't even cover all of the Rapid lines.

[Stu]

I question whether google transit will be around much longer. Read WSJ article.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122826503489174369.html

[Francisco]

Steve:

Metrolink has also posted for download the schedule and stop data for the commuter train service on our website. Metrolink is encouraging programmers to develop other useful applications using our data in what is rapidly becoming a standard format - the Google Transit Feed. We already have students at a local university looking at developing an iPhone compatible trip planner for Metrolink service using the data that Metrolink has provided.

[Stephen]

I'm still waiting for real time arrival info, for both bus and trains. I think just about all the subway stations have been equipped with brand new plasmas, but they just put the current schedule on there. They should be putting in dynamic real time arrival info that SF, NY (L line), and DC have.

For the buses, they should be following the likes of CTA, Muni, and AC Transit with their bus tracker and NextBus technologies. Real time arrival info for buses would be a whole lot of help since Metro provides a wealth of bus services which often times are not on time (mainly due to traffic).

[Randy]

Unbelievable. Literally. LA has to have "solid policies in how we give public information out" when every other major and minor transit agency across the country, up and down the state, and around the world does not have a problem with Google Transit. Right. Newsflash, taxpayer money paid for that "public information", we own it. "I guess the bottom line is we want to provide our customers the best possible service," really? Then why have three poorly working trip planners,in three different places on Metro.net when you could have at least one really good one? One that works in multiple languages, on multiple devices, and provides choices between driving, walking, and transit all in one place, and works the same way no matter what city I'm in or language I speak. Sad, just plain sad and backwards thinking from a place that is supposed to be bringing us the future. This just reeks of tired old bureaucrats trying to hang on to a crumbling little empire. If the goal is to get us out of our cars, this isn't helping. If the goal is to make life better for us transit dependent, this isn't helping either. Metro has some serious growing up to do when it comes leveraging technology for the benefit of its consumers. Instead, they are planning to pollute their website with ads - which could be done in a matter of minutes like DC's WMATA did with Google AdSense. It's ugly, distracting, and probably not worth the petty income. I gave Metro $40 billion and I can't get a decent trip planner on my iPhone? Bad economies are good opportunities for reorganization.

[Damon Tordini]

I love google transit, but sometimes I wonder if it is a mixed blessing. That trip time is staring you right in the face, and it makes you forget other factors like parking costs or even helping the environment.

For example, when getting directions from my apartment to Angel stadium, driving time is 18 minutes. A single click shows me that the same trip by bus clocks in at over an hour, and for many people contemplating public transit, that's all the justification they'll need to throw the idea right out the window.

[KinOfCain]

"we have to make sure that we have solid policies in how we give public information out"

Classic. Wouldn't want that public-domain information falling into the wrong hands!