
Don't like iOS6's (lack of) transit directions? You need this. - simonmaddox
https://github.com/simonmaddox/GoogleTransit-iOS6
======
DanHulton
I'm probably just going to pin <http://maps.google.com> to my front page and
be done with it, unless of course Google releases a full-blown app (oh please
oh please).

~~~
wes-exp
I'm doing this and I also added the bing app which, although it's a bit
clunky, seemingly has transit directions.

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barista
I was hoping that link to lead to a product page for Lumia 920.

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davidwhodge
Hey guys. David Hodge here from Embark. I just wanted to let you know that
we've got you covered for transit directions in many large cities. (And more
being added all the time)

Look for Embark in NYC, Washington DC, Boston, London, Chicago, San Francisco.
Embark will work underground and has results tailored to each city instead of
the very general results you tend to get from Google Transit.

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zbowling
Hi David, I love your apps. Long time iBart user, but what would be nice is a
single app that will cover making connections across transit systems. If I'm
going to the South Bay tell me how to take Muni to BART or CalTrain and then
BART /Caltrain to VA and how far to walk. THAT would be the killer feature
that would making having no transit directions awesome.

~~~
davidwhodge
Hi zbowling, great to hear you like our apps! Thank you for the suggestion.
We'll keep that in mind for the future.

~~~
Terretta
I'm in Rome, and it's simply not possible to get from most points A to B with
crossing transit modes and transit brands – most trips need two or three,
sometimes four.

Try getting from Pz. Belli in Trastevere to Villa d'Este in Tivoli in time for
the 8:30 PM light show. Then try to get back when the train isn't running.
Both trips involve an area bus or train, as well as local metro, bus, and
tram. The downtown map comes with four brands' routes.

In Rome even Google isn't grasping this, but same is true of NYC, getting into
the city, or heading from Newark to Queens, or Stamford to JFK and LGA.

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driverdan
How about just sticking with iOS 5 until Apple fixes this? Is it really that
important to upgrade to 6? (obviously doesn't apply to the new phone)

The latest doesn't always mean the greatest.

~~~
w1ntermute
That's little consolation to people who've bought the iPhone 5.

~~~
mtgx
I've never understood why people like to pre-order something before even one
review on it is released, or before they get a chance to see it for
themselves.

~~~
kelnos
It's Apple. In the eyes of the faithful, they can't release a bad product.

As much as we may make fun of "fanbois", it's incredible the amount of
loyalty, trust, and goodwill Apple has managed to generate for themselves.

~~~
CamperBob2
Well, there's that, and there's also the fact that it's historically been a
good bet with the iPhone to order each new model sight-unseen. That's been the
case going back to the very first one.

Not every new iPhone or iOS version was a win in every respect over its
predecessor, but this is the first time Apple has royally hosed its customers.

~~~
barista
if you forget about the antenna gate

~~~
CamperBob2
Antennagate was mostly a made-up thing, though. It served certain peoples'
interests to turn it into a bigger deal than it was.

Maps is a _huge_ part of the reason why I bought an iPhone in the first place.
I would literally rather give up the ability to use it as a telephone than
give up the ability to use it for navigation.

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djbender
Has everyone forgotten <http://maps.google.com>? From what I can tell you can
get transit direction from their website and even place a shortcut to your
Home Screen.

~~~
swang
If you use Google's transit maps at all you'd know how it's pretty much a step
below the original native Maps app. The only thing going for the mobile web
version is bike routes otherwise it's still a below par experience compared to
Maps.

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rayhano
If you're in London, check out <http://Citymapper.com> (their iPhone app saves
me everyday with live bus timings and the best route with multiple transport
options).

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tmalloy
Co-Founder of Embark here (letsembark.com). We have apps for 12 systems,
mostly in the US (BART, Caltrain, NYC, LIRR, MNR, NJT, DC Metro, Philly, CTA,
Metra, Boston & London Tube). We also integrate with iOS 6 maps, so our apps
should show up for you if they're relevant. In my subjective opinion, it's a
way better experience than a google maps web view.

EDIT: Looks like my co-founder David beat me to the punch

~~~
slykat
I love Google Transit directions. Can you give some examples of where Embark
beats out Google Transit (screenshots if possible)?

Also do you have real-time updates on arrival times with SF Muni? Google
Transit does not.

~~~
tmalloy
Here's one example we saw recently in new york going from the 116th/Columbia
stop to 12 St Marks Place. Google's result: <http://i.imgur.com/8zpbY.png> Our
result: <http://i.imgur.com/gpDu5.png> & <http://i.imgur.com/8hvrs.png>

Currently we don't have an app for muni, though it's something we're working
towards. There are some nice apps for Muni that have real-time arrivals but
lack routing. Transporter & Routsey are probably the two best.

~~~
frozenflame
Not sure if Google is monitoring your posts or if their routing glitched
before but doing the search just now gave me pretty much the same results on
Google Maps... <http://goo.gl/maps/fsfKF>

~~~
tmalloy
Looks like they're watching. It had been like that for a couple weeks and
still was up until the time I posted.

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m_st
Wow, this is a true hacker at work. Getting things done rather than yelling
around. Thank you so much for this.

~~~
Cbeck527
Agreed. This is a refreshing submission after all of these rant-y blog posts
we've been seeing lately.

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vegashacker
Somewhat off-topic, but does anyone in SF who rides public transportation
agree that Google's Map directions in terms of time predictions don't work?
Like they're almost always completely wrong. I wonder if they use scheduled
bus times instead of actual ones.

Anyway, I was hoping to be able to plug in something like Routesy to iOS 6
maps, and then I'd be a happy camper.

~~~
davidwhodge
We've found that Google has historically had a very hard time in San
Francisco, and many other big cities for that matter. The results often seem
reasonable at first, but end up being impractical in practice. We've found
that getting good routing results in cities like SF requires a lot of
attention to detail in each particular city. Google has very smart people, but
they can't focus everywhere at once.

Disclaimer, I work at Embark and we make transit apps. (letsembark.com)

Edit: it also doesn't help that Muni often doesn't run on schedule.

~~~
malyk
It shouldn't matter if they don't run on schedule because every bus/train has
a GPS on it from which you can make predictions. iCommuteSF and Routesy (and
i'm sure others) use this to give me results that are accurate the vast
majority of the time.

~~~
jarek
There's no universally accepted API for the real-time data unlike the GTFS
(General Transit Feed Specification) for theoretical schedules. You can
approach some commonality with Nextbus API/scraping
(<http://www.nextbus.com/predictor/agencySelector.jsp>) but not every agency
offering real-time data uses it.

So iCommuteSF might very well be doable, but you can't use that everywhere
like you can Google Maps with GTFS.

~~~
malyk
I didn't mean to imply you could do it everywhere. I was specifically replying
to the part about "MUNI" in the parent comment. The geo data for current MUNI
positions is public data. So if you are making an SFMUNI specific app, there's
no excuse not to use it.

Also, I didn't realize that embark also does routing, which is more than
iCommuteSF and Routesy do.

~~~
smenjas
Yes, however Muni's own signs at the stops often make inaccurate predictions.
As an occasional Muni rider, I've often waited for a bus or a train only to
find that it's not in service. There are also frequent "ghost buses", where
the minutes count down to zero but no bus shows up.

In other words, although I'm certain the transit apps could stand to improve,
I don't think even Muni has accurate data.

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psychotik
Or, use the bing app. I am not a fan of their ux but it sure works well!

~~~
rb2k_
I searched for "logan airport, boston" and didn't receive any results :-/

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jsanz
Guys, I'm from HopStop. Our app has got you covered for your public transit
needs. We support lots of cities in the USA, Canada and some in Europe. We
also have some nice features other than transit directions, such as schedules
and transit maps. Check us out!

Note: Maps integration coming soon for our iPhone app. Our iPad app is already
working fine with Maps.

~~~
gedaxiang
Make a paid version so I can get rid of the ads!

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tomjen3
Can anybody explain why Google can't simply make a version of google maps that
is installable through Safari (they way Steve wanted apps to be delivered?)
You need absolutely no permission from Apple, and their app already works on
the web (just used it to get directions, in fact).

~~~
egypturnash
Possibly they might not have been interested in fixing their competitor's
mistakes for them.

~~~
tomjen3
Bing is a competitor to Google.

IOS is a complement, which Google is trying to make a commodity through
Android (and Chrome, its involvment is Google Fiber as well as its monetary
donations to Firefox).

Google has no issue with IOS having access to excellent apps. They just don't
want them to get a monopoly position.

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drewda
Another option coming soon:
[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/228865951/transit-app-
fo...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/228865951/transit-app-for-
ios-6-and-beyond/)

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pcl
Sweet! Any plans to put this on the app store? I'd love to recommend an easy
fix for my parents that doesn't involve my dev certs.

Oh, and I'll happily pay for the app... Somewhere between $0 and $5 seems
about right.

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joeshaw
I just learned about Lumatic today (<http://lumatic.com/>) and it seems like a
worthy replacement for transit directions in many places.

Here in Boston it seems to think that I am not near any transit, but it does
happily use the transit near my house to route me on different trips. I like
the landmark-based turn-by-turn navigation -- I hope that's something that
becomes more useful as time goes on.

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scottschulthess
Is this in the app store or what?

~~~
Void_
No, it's open-source.

In order to run it on your iPhone, you'll have to pay Apple $100 per year. Or
find somebody who is already in Apple Developer program, ask him to add your
iPhone ID.

~~~
stcredzero
Someone should start a "iDevBuddy" site, where people can pay a dev for use of
her/his unused provisioning slots and install their own software.

~~~
Void_
I'm pretty sure Apple would consider that a violation of their rules.

~~~
bmeckel
Didn't stop people from doing the same general thing in regards to the iOS
beta.

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bas
I can only speak for my setup (I have Embark NYC installed), but the new Maps
app delegates transit routing to Embark NYC. Presumably this works for other
cities?

~~~
dailyrorschach
So far for me yes. Interestingly enough since I live in DC - I never had
transit directions in Google Maps anyway.

~~~
dailyrorschach
Or maybe it was just me or I gave up trying, they appear to be there now at
least on the website, no transit layer to view, but directions do appear.

~~~
mikeash
WMATA finally got their act together and opened their data to Google sometime
in the last year or so. They refused to do so for the longest time because, as
I recall, they didn't want to lose advertising revenue from wmata.com. Revenue
which amounted to something like $50,000/year, out of a budget of hundreds of
millions. Anyway, Google is pretty good at DC transit routing these days, at
least in my experience.

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antirez
Major cities here in Italy are all very well covered with transit directions,
pretty surprising it's not like that for US cities.

~~~
techtalsky
It's not so much that. If I'm at home in Brooklyn and want to get to a place
in Manhattan, there might be two ways to go. Google maps calculates what the
fastest way is, including walk time and train connections, and gives me a
route that shows the stops, walking directions, and connections.

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Void_
Thank you for releasing this as open-source.

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antoinevg
Thank you so much for this kind sir!

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m0skit0
Just don't use it.

