Google Maps has introduced a new feature: bus delay calculation. Here's how it's calculated and the cities where the feature will be present
Google continues to add useful features to Maps, which is less and less a simple navigation app and more and more a tool to organize our daily mobility. After information about natural disasters and how fast a road is traveling, Maps will soon include information about public transportation, such as whether a bus is late.
Launched in India three weeks ago, this service is expanding to a few hundred major cities around the world. The delay calculation is not based on information provided by transportation companies, which is very often inaccurate or insufficient, but on mathematical models based also on data collected from vehicular traffic. In practice, Maps combines the estimated departure, stop and arrival times of buses with the real traffic data extrapolated from the positions of Maps users who are driving around. This, by means of other complex calculations, allows Google Maps to know where each bus is at any given time of day.
What changes for users
Behind Google Maps' predictions of bus delays (as well as metro and other public transport) there are very complex calculations. But the user doesn't care about all that, because he will only benefit from this feature that will be completely transparent to him. In practice, when we set the navigator from one point to another of a city covered by this service, and ask Maps to show us the public transport for that route, for each line that we are going to take we'll see the expected delay. But that's not all: if we're about to take public transportation to get to the station or airport to continue our journey, knowing in advance a possible delay could suggest us to choose a cab or another service to avoid missing the train or flight.
How crowded will the bus be
In addition to telling us if the bus is late, Maps will also tell us if it is full. In this case the prediction is based on the data previously collected on each single line, at various times of the day. In this way we can choose whether to take that crowded bus or, if we have enough time, take the next one and avoid traveling uncomfortable and compressed. Public transport crowding forecasts will be available soon in 200 cities around the world.