Google adds Indian Railways schedule to Maps

Seems like Big G doesn’t want to miss out any potential opportunity in India. After
introducing Android One and support for various Indian languages, Google has set its eyes on the travel market. Until now Google Maps used to tell us only about locations in our city, but now we’ll also be able to plan our trips inside them!

Company has recently updated Google Transit with Indian Railways schedules and public transport schedules of 8 cities, after which this Google Maps feature has become significantly more important, useful and powerful for Indian travelers.

Given below is the new information that’ll now be available inside Google Maps as a result of this update:

• Schedules of 12,000 Indian trains
• Public transport information for 8 metro cities of India, which include Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Ahmadabad, Bangalore, Kolkata, Chennai and Pune. The transport information provided will include metro train schedules and local bus schedules.

The data added will be available on both web-based and mobile versions of Google Maps, which is another good news. Planning a trip is also quite easy. Regardless of the device that you use, it remains a very simple 4 step process. I’m going to explain the process from a mobile perspective here:

1. Launch Google Maps on your mobile,
2. Enter your destination location as usually,
3. Tap “Get Directions” button,
4. And finally, tap the “Public Transit” button.

If you want to plan your trip on a desktop, just replace the word mobilein first step with the word desktop and execute the whole process in same manner. That’ll be all, and Google Maps will show you how can you reach your desired destination via public transport. You’ll also be able to select the transport medium of your choice (i.e. metro or bus) as well as time of your departure or arrival depending on your preferences. Enough to plan a trip, isn’t it?

Google has been working with several public transport agencies around the globe since 2005 to make Google Transit as accurate and usable as possible. As a result of working in this direction from a long time, today company has public transport information about more than 1 million stops across the world in 2,800 cities.  These include cities like New York, Tokyo, London and Sydney. So after a few days when you plan your summer vacations trip to another city, keep Google Maps in mind. Perfect timing, Google!