Inaccurate tube and bus times on Google Maps

Unified API
1

Hi All,

I am writing to raise an issue about live buses and underground train times on Google Maps.

I found on Google Maps on my Android phone that there is inaccuracy for the live transit times - example being that a tube train is delayed or early by x amount of minutes [On Google Maps, a user can track whether the train is early, on time or delayed] which is not the case as I have tested this myself, the train I was tracking was coming into the platform on the Metropolitan Line, according to Google Maps it left 5 minutes ago but according to Citymapper it was “on time”.

Please can you investigate this as the live train times are different from Transport for London’s website (tfl.gov.uk) and from third party apps which uses TFL data such as Citymapper. I tried it myself where I tested the live train time on Google Maps app and it has different reporting train times compared to the live departure board in the station or Citymapper.

With the buses, I was on a TFL bus which runs every 20 minutes. According to Google Maps,the bus already passed the bus stop but this wasn’t the case. When I was in the bus, I was tracking the bus and found that the bus location on Google Maps was inaccurate.

When I open up Google Maps at home on my Android phone; I compared it with Citymapper and found there is different information about the next tube train.

Please, can you investigate this issue?

Kind regards,

2

Hi @craig, it sounds like you’re saying that TfL and CityMapper (who also source data from TfL) are more accurate than Google Maps (Google Transit)? @theochapple can you raise this with ITOWorld?

3

Hello @Tim, thank you for your reply

Yes that’s correct. the CityMapper data is the same as TFL official data but Google Maps has different reporting on the tube and bus times.

4

@craig @Tim I’ve passed that query on to Google and ITO World to look into. I will let you know what the response is. Thanks for letting us know - we are keen to ensure that our customers get the best quality information about our services from third party apps as well as our from own products.

5

Has this been addressed? Sorted out? We are seeing MASSIVE discrepancies in the ‘data’ passed externally and what your live update displays actually show. There are NO accurate listings on 8 routes. i have stood waiting for 8s for up to twenty minutes when they magically appear and disappear off of both YOUR display and every other feed i am checking, then magically reappear at a ‘fixed’ time only to wander off again. What is going on here?