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Another failure mode I've seen is a tourist with their phone set to their home timezone having their Google Maps mentioning bus lines I wasn't familiar with (which were the late night service that wouldn't go by any time soon). This seems like a weird failure mode for the app to have, as it clearly had network connectivity and should have noticed the discrepancy (or at least provide a notice).

by anonymous5419088 hours ago|

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>"how to get to X by <mode>"

I would recommend Citymapper (https://citymapper.com/) in such a situation.

by mikepurvis7 hours ago|

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Appreciate the recc but what I'm trying to get at in the parent comment is that by that time you've picked X without having an overall picture of the transit story, you've often already lost. Basically, current route planning works well when you already know where you're going, but is much more limited when you're exploring the problem space that is where could I be going.

My internal thought process as a tourist is that I have a starting point and end point in a city, and some number of hours in between. I want to do some touristy things in that time, and I don't want to waste it all waiting for transfers. I'm not asking Google Maps to be a tour operator for me, but it also can't even help when I have a specific thing I need of which there are many instances, and I'm like... I don't care which electronics store I go to, I just need an electronics store and would like one that's convenient to where I am by transit. Or like, there are four Apple Stores in this city, which one is fastest to get to by transit?

Another recent example was having a seven hour layover in Tokyo where I had to do the Narita -> Haneda shuffle, and wanted to eat something not-airport-food during that time. I really struggled with getting Google Maps to show me where would be a good point to aim for a stop that was convenient by train to both airports; in the end I asked ChatGPT which suggested Ueno Station and I ate monjayaki which was delicious.