[figseed]

I understand the frustration of Google Now not noticing you're riding public transit and automatically learning your preferences, but I'm using Google Now and it defaults to telling me public transit times just fine.

If you're using Lollipop, just above the travel time card there should be a small ellipsis icon (...) where you can change your preferred travel method to biking, driving, walking, public transit or tell it you don't care about travel times at all. It even lets you configure preferred routes if you take PT.

Also, travel time is only one of the features of Google Now, it can tell you current weather, nearby dining and entertainment, upcoming appointments, travel information such as flight data for trips it has learned about through gmail or your calendar.

I'm not saying Google Now is great and that you should use it, whether or not it has enough value is completely dependent on your use-case. But if you're having a 100% failure rate, it's likely due to configuration or exclusivity agreements as mentioned in other comments. (Unless your phone isn't running Lollipop which would be a completely different conversation)

[cssmoo]

100% failure rate here. It is convinced I work at McDonalds despite setting my work address to home.

At least I always know how far I am away from a Big Mac.

[figseed]

If you're using Lollipop, bring up Google Now, then swipe from left of the screen to the right to bring up the menu.

From there, you can click "Customize" which allows you to update your card preferences.

In your case you'd want to update the work location under "Places". Tap your work place, tap the address and update it with any place you are interested in travelling to on a daily basis. (This is actually the "Daily Commute" location, it's just automatically labelled as work) Alternatively, you could just relabel it from "Work" to "McDonalds" and then you'd at least overcome the 100% failure rate issue.

This is Customize menu is also where you can give Now your local cable provider for TV schedules, sports teams and stocks for tracking and aggregated access to all your general preferences for Now as well.

[cssmoo]

I did that :)

I've set my work address to home. The following morning it tells me I have a 23 minute commute to McDonalds again.

I'm going to reset the device tonight.

[kbenson]

There's a goldmine of jokes there. :)

I think the work identification routine is probably pretty simple. Determine home by where the phone spends a long stasis/charging period, likely overnight, and then find the most common recurring location that visited during the day during weekdays over a prior period. It's probably good for the vast majority of people.

[cssmoo]

I think you're right. It's not coincidental that after Mr Postman delivered it and I set it up, I immediately went and had lunch in McDonalds.

It appears that it doesn't understand that I could possibly work from home and went to lunch that one day and its heuristics are broken in some way.

I've turned it off now and I'm happy (plus I get another hour or so out of the battery)

[fweep]

If you ever want to use it again, you -should- be able to manually set your work locations in the Now settings. Theoretically. At least, that worked for me.