Tom Lee has some interesting insight on why the Washington Metro Authority has refused to make its data available to Google Transit, and some of the objections even make sense. But WMATA is being insufficiently serious about the benefits here. Government programs have a unique need to prove themselves forward-looking and adaptable and innovative. Passing on an opportunity to make Metro more usable is opening a future opportunity for some Republican to deny them funding or argue for privatization. There's a good argument for driving a hard bargain with Google, I guess, but at the end of the day, Google doesn't need WMATA, and won't benefit much from their cooperation. But WMATA has rather a lot to gain.
