4 ms·

I was surprised that when I swiped lift and hit 'public transit' it reported no data for Vancouver, sing Gmaps has supported directions for transit for a long t

by krrrh 14y ago

I was surprised that when I swiped lift and hit 'public transit' it reported no data for Vancouver, sing Gmaps has supported directions for transit for a long time. It turns out that getting directions via transit works as expected. I'm not even sure what the transit link when you swipe left is supposed to show. So it's a weak ui in that respect, but the app gives me what I was missing.

Groxx 14y ago
When I turn it on, I see the Caltrain, but nothing else. No busses, not even the light rail nearby. BART makes a showing, at least...
kevin_p 14y ago
It draws subway lines on the map (in a similar way to the 'traffic' layer)
snogglethorpe 14y ago
The function of the "transit" button seems a little weird generally (in web maps too). My observation is that it (1) turns off some of the excessive highlighting of highways and other roads (which for some reason is done by default even in very transit-oriented cities), and (2) it turns on highlighting of "rapid transit" lines. Unfortunately the definition of "rapid transit" used for this function is sometimes very poorly thought out. For instance, Tokyo has a massive rail system that covers the entire metropolitan area with a fairly consistent level of service. However Google maps only considers the city-center subways—which form about 25% of the entire system—to be "rapid transit", although from a user's point of view there's very little difference between subways and most other rail lines in Tokyo (they generally use similar scheduling, rolling stock, stations, and even station spacing in many cases). So enabling the transit option in Tokyo highlights subways, but it actually de-emphasizes many other (essentially equivalent) rail lines! The only thing I can think of is that the design of this feature was based on the particular city (e.g. NYC), and then sort of slapped onto other locations without a whole lot of actual thought... :(
- akgerber 14y ago
  Or perhaps based on the US, where commuter rail and rapid transit everywhere provide very different levels of service.
  - snogglethorpe 14y ago
    Ironically, it seems that Google maps actually counts Caltrain (infrequent U.S.-style commuter rail) as "transit"... >< Maybe they just roll a pair of dice...?
tterrace 14y ago
Im seeing the same thing, I'm in downtown washington, dc and I get "no public transit information is available for this region".

by krrrh 14y ago

Groxx 14y ago

When I turn it on, I see the Caltrain, but nothing else. No busses, not even the light rail nearby. BART makes a showing, at least...

kevin_p 14y ago

It draws subway lines on the map (in a similar way to the 'traffic' layer)

snogglethorpe 14y ago

The function of the "transit" button seems a little weird generally (in web maps too). My observation is that it (1) turns off some of the excessive highlighting of highways and other roads (which for some reason is done by default even in very transit-oriented cities), and (2) it turns on highlighting of "rapid transit" lines. Unfortunately the definition of "rapid transit" used for this function is sometimes very poorly thought out. For instance, Tokyo has a massive rail system that covers the entire metropolitan area with a fairly consistent level of service. However Google maps only considers the city-center subways—which form about 25% of the entire system—to be "rapid transit", although from a user's point of view there's very little difference between subways and most other rail lines in Tokyo (they generally use similar scheduling, rolling stock, stations, and even station spacing in many cases). So enabling the transit option in Tokyo highlights subways, but it actually de-emphasizes many other (essentially equivalent) rail lines! The only thing I can think of is that the design of this feature was based on the particular city (e.g. NYC), and then sort of slapped onto other locations without a whole lot of actual thought... :(

akgerber 14y ago
Or perhaps based on the US, where commuter rail and rapid transit everywhere provide very different levels of service.
- snogglethorpe 14y ago
  Ironically, it seems that Google maps actually counts Caltrain (infrequent U.S.-style commuter rail) as "transit"... >< Maybe they just roll a pair of dice...?

tterrace 14y ago

Im seeing the same thing, I'm in downtown washington, dc and I get "no public transit information is available for this region".