[angry_octet]

The bus companies could provide a free tier of data to Google, like one bus line, and after that Google Maps users would have to watch bus company ads for 30 seconds if they wanted to know where the bus was. After all, it costs money to track all those busses.

[londons_explore]

A lot of cities don't have any transit timetables at all on Google Maps, let alone realtime bus tracking, simply because the bus company considers it's timetables to be copyright, and wants licensing money to use them commercially, which Google is unwilling to pay.

Those cities usually have local route planning apps, of various levels of craptastic-ness. When travelling round the world, trying to figure out which app is good for local public transit is always on my checklist next to 'buy local data sim' and 'figure out which currency they use here and what the exchange rate is'.

[angry_octet]

That is Google using their network effect to reap the cash, they know everyone has Maps installed.

If the metro transport companies weren't so dumb and greedy they would pool their dev resources more, but I think they get suckered by signing contracts for outsourced app dev where they don't get IP rights, because that company is planning to sell the same code to 10 different customers. It usually gets tied up with the payments system (like Oyster/Octopus etc) and the morass of legacy embedded equipment.

If metro companies could act collectively they could make transit data available with an API key, which would at least allow better apps.