Google announced today that Google Maps for both mobile and the desktop is getting live transit updates, so you can find out “when your ride is actually going to arrive.”
The company has partnered with transit agencies to integrate the live data in six cities so far: Boston, Portland, San Diego, San Francisco, Madrid, and Turin.
“Often when I’m taking public transit, I arrive at my stop on time only to anxiously check my watch and look down the street for my bus, which is running late once again,” says Google software engineer Sasha Gontmakher, explaining the reasoning for the feature. “Those extra minutes I’m forced to wait seem like an eternity, and the only information I can access on my phone is when the bus was supposed to arrive.”
Users can simply click on a transit station or plan a transit route in Google Maps and see delays and alerts related to a trip with live departure times that are indicated with special icons.
Google says it is working with public transit partners to expand this into more cities. Google does note that for mobile, it’s available in the latest version of Google maps for Mobile for Android versions 1.6 and higher, but makes not mention of iOS, which is noteworthy, considering Google and Apple reportedly just renewed their partnership on search and maps.