
Citymapper - BerislavLopac
https://citymapper.com
======
orf
City mapper is used extensively in London, it’s really really good. They
are/where expanding into some form of Citymapper busses which is really
interesting.

I had the chance to interview there, but I was put off by the absolutely
terrible Glassdoor reviews[1] including consistent reports about the CEO and
the internal culture.

Given that, I’m not too hopeful about the future of Citymapper. Right now they
have a head start on others, but I don’t see anything to justify the 300
million pound valuation.

1\. [https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Reviews/Citymapper-
Reviews-E1030...](https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Reviews/Citymapper-
Reviews-E1030688.htm)

~~~
jasoncartwright
Gosh, do people rely on Glassdoor? To turn down an interview? From my
experience it's an outlet for people with a personal gripe and far from a good
source of internal information about a company.

~~~
hluska
Yes, people do rely on Glassdoor. I am one of them. I only pay attention to
the cons listed in positive reviews. Doing that has saved me from a couple of
truly awful environments.

~~~
jasoncartwright
> I only pay attention to the cons listed in positive review

An interesting technique

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prplnrpl
I worked at Citymapper. The quiet, grim truth of the place is that everyone
there is gritting their teeth trying to do work they're passionate about in
the face of an exec team who are all gritting their teeth trying to succeed in
the face of a CEO who is legitimately abusive toward the people around him.

Everyone is scared of the guy for reasons I don't really understand. Also a
lot of the current/ex employees have shares that they/we want to turn into
real money, so there is a perverse incentive to keep quiet on the off chance
that CM's CEO figures out how to make it a real business. Plus, a lot of our
friends still work there. We don't want to shit on them and make their lives
even worse.

For context, from one of the cofounders, I had it explained to me that the CEO
sometimes loses it and screams at people. Curses at them. Belittles them. It's
something everyone manages. I didn't believe it until it happened to me. And
again. And again. Everyone tip toes around him. I've watched good people come
and go from CM for years now. The best people don't stay. They've gone to
DeepMind, Monzo, Lyft, Facebook -- other great companies. The people who stay
at CM are mostly too scared to leave or beaten down enough to believe all
companies are that bad. The Glassdoor reviews are legitimate. It's a toxic
work place.

(edit: clarified the point about shares)

~~~
ebg13
> _The people who stay at CM are mostly too scared to leave_

How does this happen to people? Are there really no other options or
something? Are they barrel-bottom candidates on their final shot? I just can't
imagine feeling like I need my employer more than it needs me.

~~~
EmilLondon
Or, perhaps it isn't actually true.

~~~
ebg13
It's definitely true for a general subset of people. I just don't understand
how they got there.

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david_p
Everyone uses this is Paris by now. They are especially gaining traction in
the last weeks since people use it to know how to reach a place despite all
the strikes via whatever means of transportations are currently working.

Integrating real time city bikes data and real time bus times is the killer
feature for such a situation.

~~~
elcomet
Agreed, they give better results than official apps (that tell you to take
metros that are not currently driving because of the strike).

~~~
noname120
I have a different experience. Just yesterday Google Maps and Citymapper
advertized me trips with transports that didn't run (lines N and U) because of
the strikes. The official app Transilien only provided me trips that actually
existed.

~~~
elcomet
Okay, I was using vianavigo, maybe transilien is better (too many official
apps..)

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cdubzzz
There is also Transit, which I have used and liked for about a year now —
[https://transit.app/](https://transit.app/)

I use it in Seattle and have found it to be very accurate and (most of the
time) fast. I have a mildy annoying commute where I often need or want to
switch buses and I have to quickly look up if a particular route goes where I
am going. Transit has been good for that (in addition to regular point A to
point B stuff).

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clement_b
A few cool things (not necessarily exclusive to Citymapper).

\- Saving favorite places to get directions faster

\- Relying on their indications to use the best tube carriage and best exit
for fastest exit / interchange (can save minutes!)

\- Enjoying gamification & stats on your trips using the 'Go' mode. This will
the give you indications about how your daily journey compares to others, and
the distribution of your transits by mode (e.g., tube vs bus vs train)

\- Sharing your trip with someone

\- Switching City when travelling

\- Not using Google Maps for everything

------
0b0001
I've been researching why my cities public transport isn't available in Google
Maps. Turns out that the (mostly public) transport company assumes itself in
competition to app vendors such as Google Maps and Citymapper; the bus company
"doesn't own the whole experience anymore". So, while they give access to
static routes with some delay, real-time data or accurate data is out of
reach.

How do companies like Citymapper approach that issue? Do they usually pay fees
to the transport companies, or do transport companies in the supported cities
all give API access?

A proper app would definitely benefit public transport in my area.

(word has it that my area's transport tariffs are way to complicated to be
mapped onto Google's API)

[Edit: to be more concise; the transportation company _doesn 't want_ 3rd
parties to offer an app. How does Citymapper approach that?]

~~~
larrymyers
As long as a public transportation organization can expose their data as GTFS,
then most transit applications should be able to provide routing.

[https://developers.google.com/transit](https://developers.google.com/transit)

This is what the CTA and Metra do in Chicago. Even Metra, not known for it's
technical prowess, provides a GTFS realtime feed.

~~~
andybak
I don't think that's what the person you were replying to was asking.

More "how do they get the data from cities that don't want to give it to app
vendors like Google"

~~~
larrymyers
If it's public transportation and run by a local government and the transit
data isn't publicly available, then it's likely matter of civic engagement and
using your power as a voter to make it happen.

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rossmohax
What every single transportation app fails at is recommending a route which is
technically worse, but less crowded or otherwise more preferrable.

I dont mind commute taking 10-20% longer, if I can take a seat, or trade
changes undeground for changes overgrond or avoid connections with high
opportunity cost, where being late cost you 30 mins wait for a next train.

~~~
9nGQluzmnq3M
In addition to the default "Best route", Google Maps has "fewer transfers",
"less walking" and "wheelchair accessible" modes.

~~~
rossmohax
that is a step in right direction, but still doesn't allow me to express my
route preferences

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pythux
Wow that looks really useful, I did not know of this app. Did anyone here on
HN use it successfully? Having a single app to allow navigating cities and
buying tickets is something I have been wishing for lately (especially in
cities where there is no way to buy tickets either online or via an app).

~~~
cstross
I use Citymapper extensively on trips to cities it covers.

It's at its best in London (where, IIRC, the dev team is based): there, it's a
life-saver. It's also effective in other first-rank anglophone world cities,
such as New York. I've found its coverage can be patchy/incomplete in some
cities, presumably because the data sources they aggregate are incomplete or
inaccurate: at its worst, it degrades gracefully to the state of an offline
maps app with a public transit route-finder.

It has been around for some years and they used to integrate with Lyft: I
think the idea is to tie into transit pass apps as a way to monetize their
service.

~~~
egwor
I once used it in Berlin (I'm not from Berlin) when there were unexpected line
closures/delays. I could explain to the locals what was going on and the best
routes to use. That was simply using the app. It had more info than the local
staff/info screens.

~~~
Brakenshire
I used it in New York, and it also knew about line closures which other apps
weren’t aware of.

One thing it’s bad at (ironically because it was made in London) is the data
model for Tube stations, it seems to think a Tube station is a point, whereas
they often sprawl underground over large distances. It doesn’t have much of a
concept that you can be walking for 10 minutes to connect between lines, and
will make dodgy suggestions on that basis.

~~~
02thoeva
The app certainly does take into account transfer times between lines. If you
also require accessible transport it'll further take into account the transfer
times by measuring the amount of lifts you need to take.

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jonplackett
How the hell do so many people not know this app exists? This has been a page
1 home screen icon on my iPhone for years!

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loftyal
I don't really understand Citymapper, everything in that app is available on
Google Maps. What am I missing?

~~~
avel
Citymapper has more features, some of which Google Maps has actually copied.

They still have some more unique features. I'm not sure which of the following
have now made it to Google Maps but here are my favorites:

* Recommendations for routes that involve combining bike sharing with transit. (They call it multimodal labs)

* Commute alerts in case of disruptions.

* Map with all the transit features nearby.

* Shows car sharing options as well (such as Zipcar), in addition to Uber / Lyft of course.

* If you start a "Go" trip you get notifications on which station to get off at. On android it also works great with a smartwatch (full support for Android Wear).

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solarkraft
I tried it in a german mid-sized-to-large city (Dortmund) and the result
wasn't too great. Google Maps is superior, both in data and (maybe only
slightly) in UX.

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dguo
I use Citymapper whenever I'm in NYC. In my experience, it's much better than
Google Maps at providing alternate routes and predicting how long travel will
take.

It also has many small touches that add up. My favorite ones are that
Citymapper will tell you the optimal subway entrance to enter/exit and even
which section of the train (front, middle, or back) to get on based on which
one is closest to the exit in your destination stop.

~~~
wildfire
Like many others, I have used CityMapper extensively in London, Berlin, Paris,
Sydney, etc.

With public transport, and using the same data Google Maps has access to, it
just gives better results _except_ for walking.

I don't quite understand how the walking component of the routing is always so
bad compared to Google Maps.

I routinely end the trip when the walking section is on, and switch to Google
Maps because it is so much better than CityMapper.

If they could fix that, they would have a killer app on their hands.

~~~
seveneightn9ne
Yeah, it's sent me around the back of buildings more than once.

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tjwds
CTRL+F'd Philadelphia / Philly and no results, so:

I love this app for getting around Philly. It's spot on for planning out the
best time to leave to get somewhere and I really like its UX.

I have saved so much time, hassle, and money when following its suggested
routes … whereas with Google Maps or just my current knowledge of Philly
transit I would have taken a worse transit option or just taken a cab.

Try it out!

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jnetterf
Citymapper is excellent, especially for short trips that can be done in many
different ways. Sometimes, for longer trips, Citymapper shows “Uber” or “long
walk” as part of a route. In those cases, I would generally prefer to bike,
without a bike share. Is there a multimodal transit app that includes transit
+ cycling?

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zmk_
I like using citymapper in cities where they have coverage, however, on
Android (I found) that it simply destroys your battery. In comparison Google
Maps is more gentle on memory.

In Poland, a great alternative (that predates citymapper) is jakdojade.pl that
does inter-/intra-city transport and ticketing where possible.

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codetrotter
Looks like they have quite a few locations.

[https://citymapper.com/cities](https://citymapper.com/cities)

Still, the one they selected for me is in a neighboring country even, because
there is none closer. I think in that case it would be better to state that
none of their locations are nearby. Because for a moment I thought that that
location was the only one in the app, which had me confused why it would be
discussed on HN if the app was for that one place only.

On the page I linked above one can vote to add new locations. I doubt mine
will end up in the app anyway though – there are not very many people in my
country, and only a few people in the city I live. Even our capital city might
be too small.

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baby
Everybody used it in London, I couldn’t get used to it since I mainly use
Google maps.

In Lyon, France though google maps doesn’t work so I recently gave citymapper
a try and the interactive route where you can swipe through steps is actually
really cool!

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sleavey
Similar: OpenRouteService
([https://maps.openrouteservice.org/](https://maps.openrouteservice.org/)),
based on OpenStreetMap.

~~~
spodek
I tried it for New York City and prefer using OpenStreetMap but don't see
subway directions on it. Am I missing something or are subway directions not
available in it yet?

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ptato
I don't see any advantage this has over plain Google Maps for Madrid, other
than using a bit less Google in my life. Will try it out.

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half-kh-hacker
Here in the UK, some schools mandate unpaid 1-3 week work placements. I
actually applied for a place at Citymapper and got a promising reply, but
eventually I guess it fell through the cracks because I didn't receive any
communication after.

It would have been really cool to see what goes on in a focused tech company
whose product I actually use (and like), but I guess these things happen.

~~~
hluska
Here is some unsolicited advice from a 42 year old who has spent a career in
tech. If you are genuinely interested in a company and get one promising
reply, keep following up until you hear 'no'. We were hunter/gatherers for a
long time. Hunt the word 'no'.

This isn't an excuse, more a mournful confession. But in startups, things like
unpaid work placements tend to fall fairly low on the list of priorities. It
isn't that you're not valuable, it's just that in startups, your attention is
divided between hundreds of highly valuable things.

If you genuinely want a job, be a squeaky wheel.

~~~
half-kh-hacker
Sorry for being a bit late with the reply; I did consider following up, but
didn't due to other factors, and found a placement elsewhere. (mainly, my
distance from London.)

This is great advice, though. Thanks.

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lucasverra
best transportation app, sadly boot time in my upgraded ios device is slower
than maps or google maps.

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jedimastert
Currently in my home town for the holidays, but I'll take a look see when I
get back to Boston after the new year. There's an app called "Transit" that
does something that looks similar, I'll compare them.

~~~
maest
Thanks for letting us know.

