January 15, 2022 - The transit feature in Google Maps allows users to view public transportation options and keep track of departure times and stops

IT company Exevio from Rijeka helped implement the Google Transit feature in their city after a year of collaboration with Google, announced the bus company Autotrolej.

Autotrolej allowed Google access to their unified database of routes, timetables and other relevant data. After a successful collaboration of the local bus company with the tech giant, getting around Rijeka by bus will be easier than ever for locals and tourists alike.

Google Transit is a service within Google Maps that allows users to view public transportation options including detailed information about the route; it lists the next few departure times and all the stops between the starting point and the end destination. In Rijeka, for example, the user is guided to the nearest bus stop; once they board the bus, they can track the route along the way and are alerted to the destination stop.

Why enthusiastically report on a feature that’s technically a navigation standard these days? This isn’t exactly groundbreaking technology in this day and age; the Transit feature has been available in Zagreb since 2014, and is also available in Google Maps for Osijek and Pula.

However, it’s something that Rijeka has been sorely lacking until now. With the local bus network being the only available mode of public transportation in Rijeka, the way information is presented leaves a lot to be desired.

Even though the Autotrolej website provides detailed information regarding bus lines, routes and departure times, one would need to know their way around the city quite well for the said information to make sense.

It’s unlikely that first-time visitors to the city would be able to smoothly navigate the bus network based on Autotrolej maps and timetables alone, and Google Transit will certainly help tourists get around town by bus more easily. A small but important step in making the public infrastructure in Rijeka more tourist-friendly.

Locals are sure to embrace the new navigation service as well - this particular local is happy to attest to this. While we do have a solid grasp of all the bus routes in town, departure times and schedules have always been somewhat of an enigma.

Until now, the timetables only specified departure times for the first stop of any given line, and some of the lines operate on considerably long routes. Knowing when a bus is departing from the other side of town doesn’t mean much, especially during rush hour or in busy downtown traffic. Add to that the frequent schedule changes that are easy to overlook, and you end up missing a bus by a few minutes and having to wait for another 20 minutes quite often. 

Unlike the lucky folk in Zagreb where tram stops are equipped with digital displays showing when the next trams are about to arrive, so far in Rijeka we could only resort to waiting around and hoping that a bus will eventually show up. Not anymore!

Thanks to Google Transit, departure times are now listed for every bus stop in town, and even though the information might not be 100% accurate as of yet, it’s definitely a massive help when getting around town by bus.

I put Transit to the test a few days ago to see how reliable and accurate the schedule is in Rijeka. I changed location a few times and used them as starting points, and picked a few random addresses as the end destinations just to get route suggestions and a list of estimated times of arrival. 

In this example, bus no.2 was supposed to show up exactly at 12:00pm at this stop. It ended up arriving a minute early, not too bad!

The other two showed up exactly on the specified time of arrival. It’s a relief to have a bit more certainty when it comes to public transportation - it looks like the dark ages are finally behind us indeed.

While the schedules are currently based on fixed Autotrolej timetables, Google Transit in Rijeka should soon provide public transportation updates in real time as well.