So I’ve noticed that Google maps always adds walking time into public transport routes, but never accounts for parking and walking when driving.
I like it feel like this gives the impression that public transport is slower, when 9/10 driving with friends we waste a ton of time parking and walking.
If Google maps and Waze showed parking and walking estimates, it would level the playing field and possibly have a dramatic effect on public transport usage.
It can’t even tell you how long you gonna be stuck in a traffic jam…
It actually tries but it’s mathematically really hard. A little change to the input can dramatically change the result. It’s a chaotic problem.
Still no excuse for not accounting for parking time.
It absolutely is not a trivial thing to calculate, I expect. Until someone figures out how to use fluid dynamics to do it. But what I’m saying is that parking is similarly a non trivial problem, imo. But maybe they could start with like a heat map of targeted area, and then once that area has been reached, how much longer you hover around said target. And how far you end up stopping the car. Hmm… Yeah okay, maybe it’s not that hard and they’re just lazy bums I dunno.
That’s the thing : estimating traffic time is just as hard if not harder than parking. There’s no excuse for not providing a bracket to give people guesses for that, just like traffic delays.
Also the thing about fluid dynamics is that the flow characteristics change dramatically below and above the Reynolds coefficient, and that just shifts the issue : heavily trafficked roads tend to hover really close to it and being wrong by just a few cars or wrongly estimating their agressivity (yeah that changes things significantly) can completely throw off the calculations.
Their maps satellite view is not real-time. How the heck is Google maps supposed to know how many parking spots are available at any given moment and how long you’re gonna have to circle around the parking lot until you find a spot?
I’d settle for G-Maps just showing how long a drive takes if you drive the speed limit. Last time I took a long drive the estimate assumed I’d be doing more than ten over the whole way.
Yeah I noticed this too. They know the speed limit because the app shows it, but then intentionally estimate you going faster
Since they track people, they know how fast people are going there on average
It’s because they base their data on real people driving faster.
To be entirely fair, the speed limits they have entered into their database are often incorrect. For an egregious example, I was on a state highway in Illinois last year (I think highway 16 or something like that) and Google Maps said the speed limit was 16MPH despite the clearly posted 55MPH speed limit, so obviously whatever person or tool they had reading the signs misunderstood the highway signs as speed limit signs
There’s also plenty of local roads where Google Maps has the wrong speed limit. Some have very few if any speed limit signs posted so they clearly just have a guess entered into Google Maps ignoring the state/local laws that make it easy to guess the correct speed limit (federal highways are 65MPH, state and county highways are 55MPH, local highways/farm roads with no posted limit are 45MPH, and 25MPH within city limits if no other posted limit), others Google Maps just simply has the wrong limit entered despite it being clearly posted for no clear reason
Google maps definitely makes a 30 minute public transportation ride 2 hours by putting unrealistic walking paths
To me, it seems like they think the fact that I selected the “public transit” option means that walking must be minimized at the cost of everything else.
E.g., It will recommend I take 2 busses followed by a train, followed by another bus rather than just having me walk for 15 minutes to a bus/train line that goes directly to my destination.
Yeah. Sometimes just exciting the train station, it things I have to exit and walk around a huge loop to get to the other side
I see what you’re driving at, but Parking time is highly variable. Are you parking in someone’s driveway or 3 blocks down on the street or in the parking garage?
In North America, it’s not going to fix a 45 min walk from the nearest bus stop to a suburban home.
Drive time itself is highly variable but Google has enough data to figure it out
I think Google should have enough data by now though. If you put a residential address in, probably easy to park.
If someone puts in a theatre and then spends 20 min driving around the center/downtown, they are probably parking. Then you can count the walking time at well.
Same for someone parking at giant American Walmart with a huge lot. Google can track and already tell what mode of vehicle you are using. They do the statistics to estimates parking times under various conditions.
It won’t solve it in rural places, but even in Europe people sometimes thing driving is faster, when it’s not. In California cities, I remember buses were often very fast, but people don’t believe it because they go off Google maps and ignore parking
I don’t know how possible it would be, but I think it’s a great point you make. If people took into account the full cost of driving, it would be higher than they think and in many cases push them to other modes of transport.
Sounds like too much for requiring them to do. How would they know that?
Much bigger for me is Google Maps still does not do a good enough job. I had to go to county’s jury duty & spent a long time trying figure-out the best route, using the rail service. County constantly doing construction & signs BS: let alone the public transportation website is a joke- trip planner failed to work, for days, & no mention if can use only change.
Even arguing with my mentally compromised roommate that used the same rail station to pick-up the visitors that stayed with us, because Google Maps map did not have all the route, even in PIC form. Of course the difference was that Google Maps did not show, say or PICs of one-road become an other road. If that was not bad enough both Google Maps & my roommate’s directions did not have that you must drive towards other areas on the expressway to get to the US1 direction, next to rail station. One of the visitors said, the whole rail system definitely accepts change only, which made me happier had tons of change, but I planned for having to use paper money.How would they know that?
The same way they do driving estimates. They have your phone’s location, and they know where you are trying to go. They could have the trip “end” when your location is actually inside the place you are trying to get to, instead of ending the trip when you pass your destination at full driving speed when you dont see a parking spot out front.
They collect so much data, it would be trivial. If you are going from your house to a Starbucks, they could absolutely just have the “end” condition be when your phone notices the Starbucks wifi.
P.s., not that I think they should be collecting that data, but the reality is that they are
