Newsletter
Google Maps has added a new useful feature for those that take the subway or transit often, and that is the fact that you can now see the insides of subway stations. Some stations, like Penn Station in New York City, are pretty confusing, and feel more like a maze. Making it tough to find out where you need to go to find your platform for your train. Now Google is making it a bit easier, for you to know where the platforms are. Although the insides are still pretty bare, as it doesn’t show you where food vendors or restaurants are, or even ticket counters, which is pretty important if you’re riding Amtrak.
Being able to see the insides of train stations only appears when you turn on the transit layer inside Google Maps. Now this would typically show you bus and train routes as well as their stops. But now it shows you the insides of train stations. This will likely be expanded to work with transit stations where buses come into as well, like Greyhound stations. Although those aren’t usually as confusing. Now this is a feature that Google has needed to add for quite some time, especially since Apple Maps has already added a feature to help users know which entrance to take to find their platform quicker – again something that is a pretty big deal in New York City.
This feature is available on both desktop and mobile right now. Google has not yet announced that the feature is available, so it could still be in the testing phase – especially since we were unable to see the insides of Penn Station like a commenter on reddit was able to, but we were able to do it for Grand Central. You can try it for yourself on either Google Maps for desktop or mobile and it should work, though. Remember to enable the transit layer, otherwise, you’ll just see the usual stuff on the maps like restaurants, offices, business and more. It’ll be interesting to see what else Google Maps plans to add in the near future.