Following a request from Barcelona City Council, Google has removed a bus route from Maps. It was particularly popular with tourists. Ordinary residents could hardly use public transport anymore.
Google Maps is not just a city map. With Street View you can walk through the digital streets and the service of course also allows its users to plan routes. It doesn’t matter whether you’re traveling by car, bike or on foot. Maps always calculates the appropriate route.
But anyone who wants to use public transport can also use Google’s map service. It lists bus and train lines including all stops and departure times and calculates the best connection.
This has also been the case in the Catalan capital Barcelona. However, as The Guardian reports, the city council has now intervened and forced Google to completely remove a bus route from Maps.
In doing so, the committee responded to the wishes of the residents of the La Salut district. They had complained that line 116 was always flooded with so many tourists that it was hardly possible for residents to use it normally. Even older people with walking sticks would sometimes no longer be able to get on the buses.
The line runs between the famous Park Güell, designed by Antoni Gaudí, and Carrer de l’Escorial. For tourists, it is a convenient way to reach the park, which is located on a hill.
While residents were initially skeptical that a change to Google Maps would improve the situation, the measure has proven to be quite effective. And this although the stops are still shown on the map. Google simply no longer takes the bus route into account when planning routes.
Inspired by this success, some city officials now want to have even more references to bus route 116 removed from the Internet to further reduce its utilization. According to the report, local activists are even joking about deleting the entire Park Güell from the Internet’s memory.
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