When planning a route that involves a rail journey, where do Google Maps get their information from? I am at this point assuming this is not from other standard industry sources for the following reason:
The other day at Cannon St, there was some low-level disruption; no major delays but platform changes were in operation from the positioning of trains. I was meeting a friend due to travel on a SE service who told me "I'll just meet you on P7, you get on". However there was no train on P7; the service we wanted was on P5. He stated that's not what Google Maps said and he shared a screenshot with me - I then proceeded to tell him I was physically on the train on P5 and if you turn up there you won't see anything. When we met up it was a bit of light-hearted humour but right up until departure time Google Maps was still showing P7. I think I also a heard a manual announcement advising passengers of the same thing that our service was on P5. CityMapper, RTT & Trainline for instance were all showing the correct platform. This also isn't the first time I've seen this; whilst working I've had people ask me where the train to XXX is that's meant to be on the platform we're standing in front of even though all the station screens show different.
Obviously for those less familiar with stations, this is a problem as Google Maps is by far one of the most popular wayfinding apps out there and continually showing incorrect information, even after amendments to service whilst other apps cope fine. So why is this not feeding through?
The other day at Cannon St, there was some low-level disruption; no major delays but platform changes were in operation from the positioning of trains. I was meeting a friend due to travel on a SE service who told me "I'll just meet you on P7, you get on". However there was no train on P7; the service we wanted was on P5. He stated that's not what Google Maps said and he shared a screenshot with me - I then proceeded to tell him I was physically on the train on P5 and if you turn up there you won't see anything. When we met up it was a bit of light-hearted humour but right up until departure time Google Maps was still showing P7. I think I also a heard a manual announcement advising passengers of the same thing that our service was on P5. CityMapper, RTT & Trainline for instance were all showing the correct platform. This also isn't the first time I've seen this; whilst working I've had people ask me where the train to XXX is that's meant to be on the platform we're standing in front of even though all the station screens show different.
Obviously for those less familiar with stations, this is a problem as Google Maps is by far one of the most popular wayfinding apps out there and continually showing incorrect information, even after amendments to service whilst other apps cope fine. So why is this not feeding through?