Re: CTA seems clueless about Google Transit / no Red Line results - chri...@gmail.com - com.googlegroups.googletransit

5 messages in com.googlegroups.googletransitRe: CTA seems clueless about Google T...

From	Sent On	Attachments
Tom Tobin	05 Jul 2008 14:00
Jessica	07 Jul 2008 05:18
Tom Tobin	09 Jul 2008 08:45
RabbitTime	15 Jul 2008 09:59
chri...@gmail.com	20 Jul 2008 17:33

Subject:	Re: CTA seems clueless about Google Transit / no Red Line results
From:	chri...@gmail.com (chri...@gmail.com)
Date:	07/20/2008 05:33:39 PM
List:	com.googlegroups.googletransit

Hi all-

A few days ago, our maps were updated, and all of the red line stations should now be there. Thanks for the feedback and bug reports! As always, if you have any bug reports or other suggestions, you can also send them to maps...@google.com.

Chris Harrelson Google Transit

p.s. In this update, we've also added the bus and rail stops to the map for many other cities that have launched recently.

On Jul 15, 10:00 am, RabbitTime <Rabb...@gmail.com> wrote:

Just thought maybe I could add a little insight here: Google maps has been missing every red line station between Howard and Sheridan for quite a while now. They were there at some point in early June, I believe...and then they were just gone and have been gone since. This would probably explain why you weren't getting red line results. Though in the map you linked, it looked like it knew where the 'Bryn Mawr Station' was, even though there's no little icon on the map. Weird.

http://www.transitchicago.com/maps/maps/200806N.html <----is a map of that section of the red line, for the Google people looking into this.

On Jul 9, 10:46 am, Tom Tobin <korp...@korpios.com> wrote:

On Jul 7, 7:19 am, Jessica <jess...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Jul 5, 2:01 pm, Tom Tobin <korp...@korpios.com> wrote:

1) My immediate concern: why is Google Transit showing no results involving the Red Line? There is a huge difference in travel time between Google Transit (90 minutes, involving buses) and the RTA trip planner (60 minutes, involving only trains). Shouldn't Google Transit always show the shortest route? (Leaving out an entire train line doesn't seem to help with that.)

Would you please provide a link to the trip you planned. You can click on the "Link to this page" link on the top right corner, and copy / paste the link here. We can investigate further.

Now it looks like the Red Line is showing up in results again, both for today and for this upcoming weekend (if I specify the departure time in the future). While I'm glad that the problem doesn't seem to be showing up, it also makes me wonder what happened this past weekend. ::scratches head::

I am noticing another issue, though: I live near the Oak Park Blue Line station (outside of Chicago proper), and while I can route from my home address or an intersection near it (e.g., "Harvard St. and S Oak Park Ave, Oak Park, IL"), I *cannot* input "Oak Park Blue Line Station" — it changes my result to "Austin Blue Line Station" [1], which is the next stop down and much further away. Since Google Transit doesn't (yet) allow one to explicitly force "trains only" or at least "prefer trains", entering actual train stations tends to cause trains to be selected where they might not be otherwise.

[1]http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&geocode=&saddr=oak+park+blue+li...

Aside from this, living in Oak Park also makes one wish that Google Transit worked with the PACE/RTA transit system; I guess we'll just have to move into Chicago proper to always enjoy Google Transit. ;-)