Google To Start New York Transit Guide
Search engine giant is preparing for a big venture – and that is offer online transit guides for more than a dozen cities in the United States that cover Dallas and San Diego. Now it may take on the biggest, reported Bloomberg.
"We are always looking for ways to incorporate technology in what we do,'' Jim Redeker, assistant executive director of New Jersey Transit, said in a telephone interview from Newark. Google has "good experience at making this work.''
New Jersey Transit plans to share maps and schedules with Google as part of a pilot program to post more information about the system on the Web, Redeker said. MTA spokesman Jeremy Soffin confirmed the New York agency is also working hand in hand with Google Transit. He declined to go into details.
So far, the New York market would be the largest and most complex Google has tried to crack with its online guide. The New York MTA had 8.27 million daily riders as of Dec. 31 and runs the city's subway and buses and the Long Island and Metro-North railroads, the busiest U.S. commuter lines, the report stressed.
"Customers don't care what agency is running what, they just want to know how to get from one door to the next,'' said Allison de Cerreño, director of New York University's Rudin Center for Transportation Policy & Management.
"Most people know Google,'' said Cerreño, who walked more than 20 blocks to her job when she came to New York two decades ago because she was daunted by the subway. "That's actually a very powerful way to get the information in one place, in a way that most people are familiar with.''
