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While it’s true that there will be a lot of visitors using Google Maps, I still think that it’s a shame that we’ve ended up reliant on a private company to dire

While it’s true that there will be a lot of visitors using Google Maps, I still think that it’s a shame that we’ve ended up reliant on a private company to direct us around. In the ideal longer term, it’d be better to use this effort to improve crowd-sourced or collaborative mapping solutions.

yorwba 7y ago
I'm only aware of one open-source public transport lookup app, which is Öffi https://oeffi.schildbach.de/index.html https://oeffi.schildbach.de/index.html It doesn't have data for Taiwan, unfortunately. Are there any that do? Aside: Audrey Tang is also on HN, though not active much lately: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=audreyt https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=audreyt It sometimes strikes me as surreal that powerful people actually hang out on the same websites as people like you and me.
- BubuIIC 7y ago
  There's also Transportr, they use the same library for accessing transit data though. Transportr has some really good guides here, how it works under the hood and how to help with contributing other networks: https://transportr.app/contribute/ https://transportr.app/contribute/
londons_explore 7y ago
The blocker to open transit feeds is mostly transit providers. Most transit providers don't see timetables and routes as something to be distributed for free to everyone. They see it as a revenue opportunity - they will only make schedules available in their own app (which only routes on transit from their company), or sold for money. For smaller transit providers, they still want to be paid to produce the transit feeds, since they typically have to hire a programmer or buy software to make the transit feeds, and will only take on that cost if someone will pay for it - after all, they're happy with a paper printed timetable at the bus station. In some cases, there are also bureaucratic hurdles. In one case I would really like to name but can't, a (very big) transit provider didn't own the copyright on the names of their own stations - they only had a license to use the names within their own country. They made a transit data feed, but since the feed contained station names, they needed to sign a contract with anyone who used it assuring them the names of the stations would never leave the country. Obviously no app can ever guarantee the names of the stations would never leave the country, so the city had no transit mapping for ~a decade.
lern_too_spel 7y ago
Google Maps ingests public data feeds that anybody can use and many other transit aggregators do use: https://developers.google.com/transit/gtfs https://developers.google.com/transit/gtfs This is much the same as AMP, which any link aggregator can use and many link aggregators do use, and dissimilar to something like Apple News API, which requires direct integration with Apple.
tasogare 7y ago
Yes, and in this case there is enough information in airports and train stations to get from one point to another without ever needing to use internet. When in doubt (which I precisely was yesterday to find a station reached only by local train), staff is here to help. Sad if people don’t consider this option, which can also be useful to save money.
- kilroy_jones 7y ago
  This is true for the metro, but bus lines require Chinese for the most part. There are some really good apps for transport in Taipei.

yorwba 7y ago

I'm only aware of one open-source public transport lookup app, which is Öffi https://oeffi.schildbach.de/index.html https://oeffi.schildbach.de/index.html It doesn't have data for Taiwan, unfortunately. Are there any that do? Aside: Audrey Tang is also on HN, though not active much lately: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=audreyt https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=audreyt It sometimes strikes me as surreal that powerful people actually hang out on the same websites as people like you and me.

BubuIIC 7y ago
There's also Transportr, they use the same library for accessing transit data though. Transportr has some really good guides here, how it works under the hood and how to help with contributing other networks: https://transportr.app/contribute/ https://transportr.app/contribute/

londons_explore 7y ago

The blocker to open transit feeds is mostly transit providers. Most transit providers don't see timetables and routes as something to be distributed for free to everyone. They see it as a revenue opportunity - they will only make schedules available in their own app (which only routes on transit from their company), or sold for money. For smaller transit providers, they still want to be paid to produce the transit feeds, since they typically have to hire a programmer or buy software to make the transit feeds, and will only take on that cost if someone will pay for it - after all, they're happy with a paper printed timetable at the bus station. In some cases, there are also bureaucratic hurdles. In one case I would really like to name but can't, a (very big) transit provider didn't own the copyright on the names of their own stations - they only had a license to use the names within their own country. They made a transit data feed, but since the feed contained station names, they needed to sign a contract with anyone who used it assuring them the names of the stations would never leave the country. Obviously no app can ever guarantee the names of the stations would never leave the country, so the city had no transit mapping for ~a decade.

lern_too_spel 7y ago

Google Maps ingests public data feeds that anybody can use and many other transit aggregators do use: https://developers.google.com/transit/gtfs https://developers.google.com/transit/gtfs This is much the same as AMP, which any link aggregator can use and many link aggregators do use, and dissimilar to something like Apple News API, which requires direct integration with Apple.

tasogare 7y ago

Yes, and in this case there is enough information in airports and train stations to get from one point to another without ever needing to use internet. When in doubt (which I precisely was yesterday to find a station reached only by local train), staff is here to help. Sad if people don’t consider this option, which can also be useful to save money.

kilroy_jones 7y ago
This is true for the metro, but bus lines require Chinese for the most part. There are some really good apps for transport in Taipei.