Best Practice: Attempts to add bus stop or train station

[JanVanHaver]

[As an experienced Local Guide, I now sometimes come across inconsistencies or notice that errors have been made that I used to make myself when I started out. So I am now publishing a few 'best practice' posts, in the hope it can help others.]

Did you ever try to add a bus stop to Google Maps? Or suggest an edit to an existing train station? If so, here is my prediction for what happened to your submission: it was 'Pending' for a while, and then later on was labeled 'Not applied'. Correct, isn't it? Well, in fact that wasn't very hard to predict, as local guides are simply not allowed to make changes to anything related to public transportation. All of that is part of the transit layer, which is not open to editing for local guides.

Picture by AndyLeungHK on Pixabay

This might sound weird at first, but there is a very good reason for it: Google is working together very closely with the companies and organizations that offer public transportation to make sure that not only the bus stops and train stations are mapped properly, but also a lot of additional - and extremely useful - information is added to Google Maps. If you have not done this before, you should definitely open the information for a train station or a bus stop on Maps: the buses or trains serviced there are shown in full detail, starting from the next one that will arrive counting from the time you consult the info. And if you then click on one of the lines shown there, you get the full detail of that line (at which hour is it stopping at which place). Especially for international travelers this is very convenient, as they don't have to install the local app for each country/region they are traveling to in order to get access to information with this level of detail.

So: the best practice if you come across an error that is related to public transportation, is not wasting your time by suggesting an edit (there's plenty of other errors waiting to be corrected), but use the Send Feedback function (accessible via the main menu - the 3 horizontal lines in the top left corner). Should you come across a public transportation point of interest that is not yet shown on Google Maps, you should therefore not try to add it yourself, but rather find out which local authority or organization is responsible for it and suggest to them to get in touch with Google (https://maps.google.com/landing/transit).

Other posts in this series:

Best Practice: Entering Opening hours

Best practice: ALL CAPS / all lowercase

Best Practice: Correcting pin location

Best Practice: Choosing a more specific category

Best Practice: Submit changes one by one

Best Practice: Find the right zoom level

Best Practice: Reporting duplicates

Best Practice: Adding places without house number

Best Practice: Correcting errors you accidentally made

Best Practice: Filtering 'Check the facts'

Best Practice: Find the right category

Best Practice: Create on mobile / Complete on desktop

Best Practice: Improve your reputation

Best Practice: The best order for suggesting edits

Best Practice: Get rid of legal names

Disclaimer: the practices described here as best practice are my personal interpretation, and I don't claim any level of official endorsement.

[bdmafuz]

Hi @JanVanHaver thanks for share with us.

[Anonymous]

Hi @JanVanHaver,

Many thanks for your article, and I read the others too. All were very well done, the photos helped explain the text, and best of all, informative and useful.

Charlie

[JanVanHaver]

Thank you for the kind, supporting words @Anonymous, highly appreciated.

[bhaskar_arin]

@JanVanHaver, It has the great information.

Thanks for sharing 🙂

[JanVanHaver]

I'm glad you find it helpful @bhaskar_arin

[aka_Rὁn]

@JanVanHaver

I have finally worked my way through the entire set of articles you have posted on best practices and this is the final one.

It brings to mind an issue which I wonder if you could help resolve that is on the subject of train stations.

Our local underground station at  Northfields is correctly identified but there is also another (entirely bogus) link some distance away which has the same label and is totally misleading.

Here is a screenshot of the Google Maps entry for your reference.

 
As you can see the pin location points to a private house rather than to the station but Google Maps does not allow me to edit the entry and so I have had to refer the case via the "submit feedback" option which could take months.

Is there any other way to fix this mistake since the current link is totally bogus ?

Thank you.

...

[JanVanHaver]

No @aka_Rὁn, apart from Send Feedback & lots of patience, I don't see other options (I still have some ideas for future posts and one of those will be titled "Best Practice: Learn to be patient" 😁).

By the way: when was that screenshot taken? When I now open the map, I don't see that additional POI you mentioned, no matter how much I zoom in (2nd house on the left when you enter Devonshire Rd, right?) only the one where it's supposed to be.

[aka_Rὁn]

@JanVanHaver

The bogus link is still there on my screen.

Here is a screenshot I just took a few minutes ago and after zooming out to a nearby location.

The Northfield Station entry should be removed immediately but Google Maps appears to have blocked any attempt to do so by the usual means.

I wonder why ...

There is also another Northfields Station location on the map and it is the real one.




...

[aka_Rὁn]

Here is a screenshot from Google Maps that shows the duplicate entries.

Northfields Station (duplicates)

The bottom one - highlighted by the London Transport Underground symbol - is the real one.

The other is fake and should never have been added in the first place.

...