While Google Maps already included essential public transportation data, it can now generate guidance along with timing information to provide users with accurate ETAs

While many drivers use Google Maps for navigation instructions to reach a destination, faster, easier, and safer too, the service, along with its mobile applications, offers plenty of other capabilities that also come in handy to those who don’t have a car.

One such example is public transportation support, a feature that lends a hand to pretty much everybody who wants to travel in a city in a more convenient way.

And as it turns out, Google has been working on expanding full public transportation support to more locations, and most recently, the search giant released a significant update for users in Lyon, France.

While Google Maps already included essential public transportation data in the region, it now looks like it’s been updated with detailed route data, as it can now generate step-by-step guidance along with timing information to provide users with accurate estimates for their ETAs.

This is a feature that’s already live in several other large cities across the world, and in most cases, Google is working together with public transportation authorities in each region to make it happen. Also, the release comes only a few weeks after Google brought the same capabilities to Lille, another French city now on Google Maps with full public transportation data.

In the meantime, Google is also working on several other major improvements for Google Maps, and one of them concerns drivers too.

Beginning with a new update going live this year, Google Maps would introduce a new route algorithm that would no longer try to find the fastest way to a specific destination but the most fuel-efficient one.

Google says Google Maps would therefore help reduce the carbon footprint, as the provided routes would take into account several new factors, including the fuel consumption based on the type of roads you’re going to use.