Google Maps Update Makes All Those Bus Tracking Apps We Told You About Last Week Obsolete
by Brian PJ Cronin
Apple’ s not the only tech company that unveiled something this week that single-handedly makes a whole bunch of beloved apps and services useless. Yesterday, Google announced that Google Maps now tracks public transit buses in real time, so that you can see how much time you really have until your bus arrives. So, remember all those apps we told you about last week that let you track buses in a particular city? Yeah, you can pretty much forget about those.
Using live data supplied by the transit providers, Google has made it easy for anyone accessing Google Maps on their desktop or phone to see if their bus is late. When you click on a bus stop, you’ ll see which buses leave from that stop and when they’ re due to arrive. You’ ll also see the bus route appear on the map. None of that is new, but now if one of the bus departure times is listed in bold and there’ s a Wi-Fi symbol next to it, that means the bus is running late and the time listed is the actual time as opposed to the scheduled time. Live service alerts are listed as well.
Don’ t erase those old apps just yet, though. Right now the service only works in four American cities (Boston, San Francisco, San Diego, and Portland, Oregon) and two European ones (Turin and Madrid.) But Google plans to add more cities to the service, and considering how many transit agencies in other cities already track buses in real-time, it shouldn’ t take long. Google also has an advantage over other apps since their transit tracking service is folded into something most people already use and are familiar with, and there’ s no need to download something different for each city.
The golden era of bus tracking apps may already be over, but anyone with a bus to catch will find this Google Maps update invaluable. You can also kill a good twenty minutes with it by aimlessly scrolling through Madrid, looking for late buses. Not that we did that or anything.
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