[Imports] Google Transit Partner Program General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) in OSM

[lists at whitehouse.org.nz]

Hello,

I was looking at:
http://maps.google.com/help/maps/transit/partners/participate.html

It sounds as though over 500 cities are doing all the hard work to process
their transit data into a standard form and hosting it somewhere for Google
to pick up. I would guess that, with all the hard work done, at least some
of these cities could be convinced to allow OSM to grab a copy of the
google_transit.zip file and add it to the map.

Has anybody looked into this idea? Where the regional authority is doing
all of the hard work, it seems a far more sensible approach to obtain
current data this way than for individuals to add relations manually:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Bus_routes

It looks as though Wellington, NZ uses this service properly:
http://google-au.blogspot.com/2009/08/transit-information-comes-to-google.html

And there is an announcement about Auckland (though I can't see it working
on the actual Google map):
http://google-newzealand.blogspot.com/2009/12/mapping-out-public-transit-options-in.html

I also came across this presentation:
http://www.slideshare.net/jgui/an-open-source-multimodal-journey-planning-system-based-on-de-facto-standards

Regards,

Aaron