City Mapper

[adrian_turtle]

There’s a transit app called City Mapper, that I used to use. (For values of “used to” ending very emphatically this morning.) It showed a variety of transit routes based on where you were, comparing them with each other and with biking and walking. It plans a route based on the schedule and then uses GPS to say how far away the next buses are coming. Useful for “this bus is crowded, I’ll take the next one in 5 minutes” or “the next one won’t be for half an hour.”

This morning I got up early to get to Somerville because there were things I wanted to do in the attic before meeting people at 11. Thanks to City Mapper, I just wasted an hour trying to make a bus connection that does not exist. The bus is not going through that neighborhood today. That’s fine, I hope it’s enjoying itself at the block party on the other end of town, but I want the transit app to know where it is. It is not fit for purpose.

Comments

[sonia]

Wow, that sounds so frustrating! Are they using “AI” to invent buses, or is it just plain broken?

[redbird]

The app called Transit has significantly improved the interface/displays recently. Iit now emphasizes the next three buses or trains that will be arriving on a given line, and when they're likely to arrive (based on GPS or, if they're not transponding, the official schedule). There's also less small print, which makes a difference.

What I've been doing recently is sometimes using CityMapper to suggest a route, and then Transit to show me where the bus or train is, but I may have to poke at Transit for route suggestions.

ETA: I just looked at both the MBTA website and the Transit app. The MBTA site has an alert for the 66, but only lists a few affected stops. Transit shows me that the next Harvard-bound 66 at Harvard Ave and Comm Ave will be at 1:18, which large lines through all the normally scheduled buses before then.

[adrian_turtle]

I don’t think they’re inventing buses entirely from whole cloth. They are
probably assuming the bus is running on its usual schedule, and that every bus is exactly on time. I think that was state of the art for train schedules 100 years ago, when they didn’t have AI.

[ckd]

I second the recommendation for Transit. I've had pretty good luck with it for route suggestions, though my habit is still to start with Google Maps for transit directions and then swap to Transit to see if its recommendations are similar.

Transit is particularly useful in Seattle, since it covers the mishmosh of transit operators; I can see the bus, light rail, streetcar, foot ferry, and monorail all in the same app.

[evalerie]

You have *way* more experience at navigating cities with public transit than I do, so probably you've already considered this and found other better alternatives, but: I've had pretty good success navigating public transit in big cities with plain old Google Maps. You tell it where you want to go, press the "public transit" icon or the "walking" icon, and it maps out some recommended ways to get there. Google Maps almost always knows about road closures when I use it for driving, so I am hoping this means that it also knows about changes in bus and train schedules.

Just a thought anyway. Like I said, you know more about this than I do.