By
Telecom Lead Team: Google announced its association with thetrainline.com to help
customers plan train travel across Britain.
The
launch of information and timetables for mainland Britain on Google Maps, the
most popular online mapping site in the world, expands Google’s mapping and
directions tool and supports thetrainline.com’s
goal of making rail journey planning easy and highlighting the convenience and
cost benefits to people of travelling by train.
Google
Maps is available in over 50 languages. With London set to be a popular
destination this coming summer, tourists will also be able to combine walking
with transit directions on Google Maps for mobile to help find their way around
the country.
Train
travellers can search for journeys across the country at maps.google.co.uk with more
than 2,500 stations and 170,000 trips nationwide at their fingertips, in
addition 8,000 bus stops and over 250 tube stations.
The
website gives users information on walking directions and bus timetables for
connections, as well as the opportunity to click through to leading online
train ticketing website thetrainline.com,
to search for and book cheap tickets for their journey.
Searching
for travel information across Greater London was already possible but now
thanks to the new updates, internet and mobile users have access to timetables
and train information for routes across the whole country.
“We’re
delighted to be providing train travel information through Google Maps for the
first time. We want to make sure that consumers are always able to consider rail
options when making a journey and this innovation will help train travellers
nationwide to do that by planning their route more easily,” said Richard
Rowson, Product Development director at thetrainline.com.
“Google Maps seeks to provide a wide range of relevant local information,
and public transport station and schedule information is definitely a part of
that. It is great to be able to partner with companies like thetrainline.com and have
their schedule information available in Google Maps for the whole of Britain.
This means we can reach and help a larger number of people with useful national
rail train information,” said Ed Parsons, Google UK’s
geospatial technologist.
“We
want to encourage visitors to explore the whole of Britain. With the Olympics
less than 200 days away Google’s new initiative is exciting news. Millions of
visitors plan their itinerary using Google maps and this additional information
will act as a catalyst and inspire them to discover all that is wonderful about
our great country,” said Christopher Rodrigues, VisitBritain Chairman.
