If you’ve ever been a visitor to Sydney or even a local, sometimes wayfinding can be an utter pain in the backside, especially at some busy, inner city stations (here’s looking at you Central, Town Hall and Wynyard) and as someone with a disability it can be an even more daunting experience.
So Transport for NSW, Sydney Metro through its Metro Trains Sydney operator along with Sydney Trains and Google have partnered together to offer better wayfinding around some of busiest station on the Sydney trains and Sydney Metro networks.
Google has launched indoor Street View imagery for 130 train stations and a dozen metro stations in Sydney so you can virtually navigate interactive panoramic imagery inside Sydney stations and know your way when you get there.
Some stations that have been included in this roll out include heritage listed St James Station to Circular Quay with its views to the Harbour bridge and Opera House, to Milsons point to the ever growing western Sydney suburb station of Parramatta.
As part of this Australian first initiative, Google is also bringing detailed navigation directions for accessible routes across 70 complex train and metro stations across Sydney to Google Maps.
As part of this, Google has alongside Transport for NSW, built these tools to enable Sydney commuters the ability to choose the best and most accessible entrances, exits, signage and paths within the station and better anticipate in-transit travel times along these pathways.
This information will be put into the NSW government’s Open Data Portal, which will help the transport industry and app developers to access this valuable information and find more solutions to enable accessible transit travel in the future.
To be able to try these new tools out, all you will need to do is to type your destination into Google Maps either via the mobile app or desktop website, tap “Directions”, then select the public transport icon and any route options – such as “wheelchair accessible”, “fewer transfers” and “less walking” options.
After you tap your chosen route, the detailed navigation instructions will be displayed if your route takes you through a complex station in Sydney.
