- Public transportation channels are buggy on Google Maps
- It seems to affect some but not all users
- Google has not yet made a comment on the question
Millions of us rely on Google Maps to switch from A to B every day, so when something is wrong with the application, it can cause a serious headache – as it seems to have happened with a new bug that affects the search for public transport departments.
As the Android police noted, a long thread on Reddit documents the experiences of many users who see the Google Maps application for Android Crash when they are looking for public transport departments to a direction.
It is difficult to assess how common the problem is for the moment: the Android police team has been able to reproduce the bug on one of their phones, but this is not a problem I see on my own Google Pixel 9 at the moment.
What is certain is that it is frustrating for the people who see it, letting them unable to use Google Maps to trace a route to their destination. For the moment, Google has not officially said anything about the problem or a potential correction.
What you can try
Without any Google word – and I will update this article if there are any – the users have really stayed sitting and await a fix. It seems that the problem has hit several Android phones, including those made by Google, Samsung and Poco.
According to the Reddit thread, it seems that putting Google Maps in incognito mode could help. You can do this by pressing your Google account avatar inside the application (top right), then choosing Activate incognito mode in the menu.
This apparently solves the problem, although your research and travel is obviously not registered in your Google account. It also suggests that the problem could be something to do with the way Google Maps synchronizes with the accounts.
This could also be worth it when verifying some of the alternative public transport applications available on Android, such as Citymapper and Moovit. There are also Apple cards as of course, but this bug does not seem to affect Google Maps for iOS.
