Google Maps - bug in bus journey planner

[TheManOnThe172]

I've just spotted an oddity in the bus journeys that Google Maps offers.

From "Bakewell" to "Chesterfield" (no specification of exact stops), it offers the obvious X70/170 Hulleys service from Rutland Square in the centre of Bakewell to "New Beetwell Street (Stop B12)" in central Chesterfield.

But then it adds a four-minute walk back to the West Bars roundabout (which was the previous stop on the X70/170) in order to catch a different bus to "New Beetwell Street (Stop B9)".

It appears to do this for many, but not all journeys on X70 or 170. In the reverse direction, it cuts out the walk, and suggests that passengers catch an earlier bus from New Beetwell Street to West Bars roundabout, there to pick up the X70/170 that has also come from New Beetwell Street.

If you replace "Chesterfield" with "New Beetwell St, Chesterfield", the problem disappears.

Clearly the default location for "Chesterfield" is somewhere that is closer to the B9 stop than the B12 stop in Beetwell Street. But how can a few metres' difference justify a change of bus and (in one direction) a four minute walk?

Is this a familiar generic problem, or something I should be trying to tell Google about? My previous experiences of trying to tell them about mapping problems was risible (it took a year to get them to correct the location of a postcode). Any ideas?

 

[PG]

I don't think that it is a problem purely limited to Google, more a generic undocumented feature with electronic journey planners.

It's one of those irritating things that'll only be addressed if public transport becomes far more important than it currently is.

 

[Ken H]

I don't think that it is a problem purely limited to Google, more a generic undocumented feature with electronic journey planners.

It's one of those irritating things that'll only be addressed if public transport becomes far more important than it currently is.

Its the same thing as some of the daft driving routes it sometimes gives.
The public transport one finds the nearest stops to your starting and end points, then links them up.
The road one seeks to maximise use of motorways and dual carriageways.
As with any computer output, sanity check before using.

 

[TheManOnThe172]

Bu

[snip]The public transport one finds the nearest stops to your starting and end points, then links them up.

But even if the computation is to optimise:

A) Home
to
B) nearest arrival stop
to
C) ideal arrival stop
to
D) destination

then in the Chesterfield example, the optimal way of getting from B (New Beetwell Street Stop B12) to C (New Beetwell Street Stop B9) would be to walk the few metres directly. Not walk for four minutes back to the penultimate stop on the bus you had just got off, and then catch another bus!

There is something wrong somewhere.