The funny part is that several providers do actually have GTFS included in GMaps. Someone with decent lobbying power managed to score a contract to provide "Google Maps integration", so I don't think the providers even have the right to share the GTFS files, even if they have them.
And since the contract is absurdly overpriced and (unofficial info) charges for each conversion instead of simply handing over the conversion software, their GMaps data is often out of date. So currently, for at least one city, the GTFS file my system generates from scraped data is actually more accurate than the one they have and provide to Google.
One of my goals though is quite similar to what you're saying - to have the most accurate data and provide it openly enough that it takes away Google's (and anyone else's) power to come in and offer something like "we'll develop a conversion system for free if you push Chromebooks or GClassroom in your schools". Our municipalities love making deals that are "free", but actually end up costing far more in other ways and it really needs to stop.
I was wondering what the situation was, hah (and hoping my totally presumptuous read of the situation wasn't totally off lol... yay it wasn't).
Ugh, incompetence enforced by policy is the most flat-out frustrating thing ever. One wonders where hard cynicism comes from... :'(
I'm very happy to hear you're (somehow?!?!) succeeding at your goal of building this out, while somehow dodging all of the rent seekers' radars (boggle). It's very cool to see when these sort of wins happen. Fist bump :D
I hadn't quite mentally resolved/connected the sequence of "push XYZ service" -> "free GTFS integration"; it was much vaguer in my head, more just thinking the very presence of Google in a likely-highly-permeable environment (without strongly held technical opinions) would have a reasonably statistically meaningful likelihood of Sales swinging past at least once or twice. I guess my brain immediately noticed the opportunity to show a spine and then be observed for having done that, something something free positive reputation. I... *sigh* I guess that is only satisfying and representative of good opportunity if there is actual competent perception on the other side of the table.
My naive guess is that Google does GTFS integration (and long-term maintenance) for free worldwide (likely with small internal teams in charge of resolving locale-specific spec violations and creative interpretations) to make Maps' moat bigger and further entrench their guarantee of establishing and retaining their captive audience. I always got the impression GTFS as a whole (which I understood was a Google initiative) was predominantly a broad sweep towards getting everyone mostly on the same chapter (as opposed to the same page) to strategically solve for the "last mile" of fixup work and viably keep up with the incoming firehose of transport updates at global scale.
I can only agree that it's incredibly frustrating that sales, municipality manglement, and wasteful solutions/implementations combine with exponentially negative and infuriating effect.
As a footnote (I'm not sure if it's helpful), the state I live in (NSW Australia) has a functional/sprawling GTFS (incl. realtime) implementation that covers the (inhabited parts of the) whole state (800,000km²) with the vast majority of the transport chaos :) disproportionately centered around the greater Sydney area (vaguely around 12,000km²). It's kind of far away :) so headscratching about the data would probably have the occasional semblance to poking at a distant server in the cloud, but it could be useful as a high-level reference. (I'm unfortunately not sure what it does especially well and what it gets especially wrong.) https://opendata.transport.nsw.gov.au/
And since the contract is absurdly overpriced and (unofficial info) charges for each conversion instead of simply handing over the conversion software, their GMaps data is often out of date. So currently, for at least one city, the GTFS file my system generates from scraped data is actually more accurate than the one they have and provide to Google.
One of my goals though is quite similar to what you're saying - to have the most accurate data and provide it openly enough that it takes away Google's (and anyone else's) power to come in and offer something like "we'll develop a conversion system for free if you push Chromebooks or GClassroom in your schools". Our municipalities love making deals that are "free", but actually end up costing far more in other ways and it really needs to stop.