Probably one of the nerdier things I do in my free time is fix and report transit errors on Google Maps. Accurate transit directions and schedules are extremely important if we want more people to take transit more often, especially in scenarios where good transit options exist! I do these bug reports and the subsequent follow up work because I feel an odd sense of gratification knowing that there are people from all walks of life who are now able to get places just a little bit easier from each correction made to Google’s transit data.

Last month I was able to get the most significant error I’ve encountered so far in Taiwan fixed after weeks of good old cold tweeting, calls, and emails. Read onwards if you want to learn random Taiwan transit facts you’ve never asked for and my circuitous route of getting this particularly significant transit feed mistake fixed.

The Taoyuan Airport Express MRT line whisks passengers from Taiwan’s Taoyuan International Airport to downtown Taipei in less than 36 minutes from Terminal 1 and 40 minutes from Terminal 2 for just $5.36. The line is Taiwan’s connection to the world and it’s an incredibly cheap and convenient way to get to Taipei with some scenic views to boot. The express line, which opened in March 2017 after over a decade of construction and many delays,  is unquestionably the best option to get to the city center from the airport. The line cost 3.7 billion U.S dollars to complete.

Unfortunately, for as long as I can remember the data feed for the train line incorrectly showed a 75 minute trip time—making Google maps recommend driving or an unnecessarily complicated and expensive public transit trip via the high speed rail network. I really don’t like to think about how many thousands of people gave up after seeing the directions and just took a Taxi…I’ve certainly have heard first-hand from friends who have done just that.

The airport express train being a major transit line that serves international visitors I assumed somebody would notice and fix the error—but boy was I wrong. Much like the recent Youbike fiasco I was met with indifferent frontline customer service staff when I emailed and called Taoyuan Metro with the bug report and how to fix it. Their response was pretty callous even for a bureaucracy and they curtly replied “the correct timetable is on the Taoyuan Metro website.” I would send follow up emails and try to note that Google Maps has 1 billion active users a month and walk them through how easy it is to submit timetable corrections. These continued overtures were swatted down with a “Taoyuan Metro appreciates your opinions” canned response.

So after hitting that dead end I decided to expand my outreach a bit to see if I could get a better result. I reached out to Google Maps, the mayor of Taipei, and even friends at Google’s California HQ. A few of my friends at Google were willing to take the time to submit internal bug reports, but never heard back on who was responsible for the transit feeds in Taiwan. No responses came from the official Google Maps twitter account either. It seemed like another dead end and a timetable error that would live on forever.

As a last ditch effort I decided to @ tweet somebody I had been hearing a lot about lately because of her efforts to “reboot” Taiwan’s democracy via digitization efforts—Digital Minister Audrey Tang. Digital Minister Tang is a member of Taiwan’s Executive Yuan and probably had much better things to be doing than responding to folks on Twitter. I want to sincerely thank Digital Minister Tang for being the first person to care about the issue and to help me connect with the subcontractors that were in charge of the transit feed for the Taoyuan Metro Line.

As of November 4th, 2019 Google Maps started giving the correct transit directions to and from the Airport. I’m hoping this has had a positive impact on the hundreds of thousands of foreign tourists who visit Taiwan and rely on Google Maps to get around. It’s unclear how long the feed was incorrect, but the first time I noticed the error was in 2018. Despite the map error, many tourists were obviously still able to figure out how to use the train as evidenced by the high ridership (64,000 /day), but it probably was an unnecessary inconvenience for many who trust and rely on online mapping services to get them where they’re going correctly.

I’d imagine if their first impression of transit direction in Taiwan is that it’s unreliable they may feel less at ease using Google Maps for the rest of their trip. Transit data in Taipei city proper is quite reliable, although it does tend to slightly overestimate the time it takes to get places on the MRT. 

Have you noticed any mistakes in Taiwan Google Maps that drive you crazy? Leave a comment below of the error and I’ll try to package all the errors into one bug report email for the proper folks.