An interview with my brother made the front page of the Boston Globe’s site. The article profiles him and his inspiration for spearheading the addition of public transit to Google Maps.
Chris Harrelson remembers taking the Franklin Line commuter rail from Norfolk into Boston at age 10, seeing the intense green of passing lawns and watching fall leaves turn copper and red outside the window. “I loved riding that train,’’ he says. “The way it moved seemed sort of magical.’’
So when Harrelson joined Google as an engineer almost two decades later and saw a demo version of Google Maps that calculated driving and walking directions, he was struck by what was missing from the program: public transportation.
