Why Won’t Google Mark Atherton Station as Closed?
The small, extremely wealthy community of Atherton, CA has for the past few years been without a train station for the first time since 1866, in part due to low ridership and its old-fashioned configuration that required a hold-out_rule. In November 2020, Caltrain voted to permanently close the station in Atherton, and the last trains stopped there on December 19, 2020. But you wouldn’t know this from looking at Google Maps. As of today (25 January 2025) the station is still listed as being open.
Being somewhat of a railfan I saw this news when it came out and made sure to notify Google. Some while later I noticed the information hadn’t been updated, so I reported it again. Google still hadn’t marked it as closed. “They’ll get it eventually!” I thought. Well, a couple days ago I was looking at something else on Google Maps and noticed that four years later they still haven’t marked it as closed! We’re not talking about a far-flung station in the middle of Siberia or something like that; Atherton station was less than 10 miles from Google’s headquarters in Mountain View!
Since the station is “open” according to Google, one can still leave reviews. This one is from someone identified only as “google user”.
For some reason google refuses to mark this location as closed. If you attempt to enter the train at this location, you will be killed as the rapidly moving train shears your limbs from your body. I do not recommend it.
So what’s the solution here? When a business closes or changes its hours and you wish to update this information on Google Maps Google will ask you if you have any pictures or other proof. They did not ask for any proof when I tried marking the station as Permanently Closed. I would have glady submitted one of the many news articles that corroborate my claim.
Only 6.68 square miles, as the crow flies, separates Atherton station from the Googleplex. They could send an intern there on a quick errand. Courtesy of gps-coordinates.net.