Melbournites will soon be able to use Google Maps to plan a public transport journey across the city. This is something that pretty much every other public transport system in Australia has provided for years, including Tasmania. Better late than never.
Melbourne tram picture from Shutterstock
To say it’s been a long time coming is a massive understatement, but let’s not look a gift horse in the mouth, eh? Victorian travellers will soon be able to look up directions on Google Maps and get accurate timetable data to plan their journey on public transport; just like in every other major city in Australia. (Currently, the options for Victoria are limited to driving, cycling or walking.)
In an official statement released on Reddit, Melbourne Premier Daniel Andrews said that the current integration wasn’t good enough. This was accompanied by a screen shot comparing a Melbourne Google Maps entry to one in Sydney:
Victoria’s PTV timetable data has subsequently been released. It contains scheduled information for all metropolitan and regional trains, all metropolitan and regional bus (including coach) and metropolitan tram services in Victoria.
“Soon you’ll be able to find your way on the apps and websites you use every day,” Andrews promised.
This feature was originally announced all the way back in 2011. That’s a fairly tardy turnaround time, even by pubic sector standards.
Now all we need to do is wait for Google to add Melbourne’s timetable and route information into Maps. If previous roll outs are anything to go by, this should only take a matter of days. Hurrah!
Comments
21 responses to “Melbourne Public Transport Information Is Finally In Google Maps”
Wait… what?!
So is it Melbourne? Or Victoria?
Is there anything out there beyond the ring-road?
Sigh, the 25% of Victorians who live outside of Melbourne would like their public transport information available on the world’s largest search engine too. And we’d like our existence to be acknowledged by sub-editors in their headlines from time-to-time.
The data contains V-Line (both rail and bus), the Overland, regional buses and Skybus.
Why the heck did this take so long? :3
Recently released PTV data – now live on the HERE app!
https://twitter.com/here/status/583603684564541440
https://www.here.com/app
Disclaimer – I work for HERE!
I’m still not seeing the data flow into Google maps. Maybe this story “broke” too soon…
Seems I am first to include Melbourne at http://timeandwheel.com
Disclaimer : I am the author of both the site and the app.
But it is partly thanks to the data that we can now have Australian-wide trip planning.
Still no transit info as of 2015-05-04. Sigh.
Still nothing as of June. I had a quick look at HERE maps and that is integrated. The offfline maps on that app are brilliant! (**not affiliated)
Guys… Its July and still nothing on Melbourne PT on Google Maps… This is a fib! #sadface
Still no data, common, liars.
Yes, this is ridiculous… Can we please get some media to follow up with PTV to see where they are with the integration?
Besides all this, the data they released does not even include realtime tracking!
Still nothing.
@chrisjager I’d be really curious to read a follow up on this.
Hello All,
I personally requested PTV to fix this back in 2012. I even offered my services to help with the integration. To my surprise I stumbled across this article.
After reading I tested it out.
Sadly as of 11/08/2015 This service is still unavailable.
The problem is not with Google. Instead the problem is with PTV. They must provide the details for Google. For Simplicity I will post the link needed by PTV, to get them started.
https://maps.google.com/help/maps/mapcontent/transit/
All PTV need to do is provide the Data. Google will do the rest.
Kind Regards,
Melbourne Person
I have successfully loaded the PTV dataset in my journey planner, integrated with the data from the rest of Australia and New Zealand at http://timeandwheel.com.
Admittedly, it contains archives within an archive,. but such construct can be found in New Orleans data as well. Other than that, I am not aware of any construct that would prevent Google from using the data. Both Bing Maps and Rome2Rio do include Victoria.
I’m visiting Melbourne in a week time and sadly I can’t find any public transport information on Google Map which I used to do it when I visiting Japan previously.
March to September and yet the information is not updated to Google Map yet?
I had such high hopes after reading that headline. Then I looked at the date…April Fool’s everyone.
Any Chance you doing an investigation into why this headline is still not true?
You know what the funny thing is? Windows 10 just alerted me to an event and I clicked around there and what do you know? Transport options! It says “data supplied by PTV”! So what the what Google? Even the lumbering giant has been able to swing his gaze in our direction, I am sure the all-mighty Google should be able to implement it by now?
11 months on and still nada. Any updates available on this?
You can check now, and Google maps it’s working in a perfectly integration with PTV. Now you can plan your trips and actually know what trams/trains to catch to get around.