Yeah, I couldn't believe how bad it was, especially since Sydney has been fine for years. Apparently the root of this was their transit agency's longtime refusal to open up their data: http://m.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/melbourne-pub...

Some data was finally released last April (promised as part of an election reform campaign), but as of October there were still GMaps integration issues: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/victorian-g...

I was involved in a lot of (too many) geo/transit/open data conversations in the late 2000s, and sadly, this kind of short-sighted/nonsensical thinking was all too common, and I'm sure persists in many of the places where people lay the blame on GMaps, when it's actually due to stonewalling bureaucrats.

Just use Öffi, Öffi has support for almost every city globally, including Tokyo and Melbourne.

But the UI is ugly.