Citymapper

> I was put off by the absolutely terrible Glassdoor reviews[1] including consistent reports about the CEO and the internal culture

I'm genuinely surprised by that. I knew a couple of people who worked there, and both said they loved working there.

I had the same experience years ago.

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.

I work at Citymapper as a software engineer, and I know from my own personal experience that Glassdoor doesn't reflect our culture.

We have a smart and passionate team. Everyone is supportive of each other, and you will learn a lot every day. There's an abundance of interesting problems around and everyone is passionate about building a great product.

Anyone thinking of applying and is concerned about this, please contact me: emil at citymapper and I can share my experiences.

I actually did interview there maybe 3 years ago. Did the take home test and was invited in for the multiple interviews. I asked about the Glassdoor reviews and they more or less admitted that is was a 'demanding' environment, much more than my current employer at the time, which was Amazon, if that doesn't say enough

Glassdoor is about the crappiest website I’ve seen. Requires a different login for each of it’s 100 country domains it has. Never seen anyone do it that unprofessionally. My .com login isn’t accept on .co.uk and when I reload the page it goes to .hk where I currently am and my login isn’t accepted there either.

> 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.

Since you are ex-CM & close to people there, I just want some perspective & feedback from you on my view.

When I first heard of CM, I felt that it should have a wikipedia/waze kinda model with user participation as its the frequent travelers that have the best insight. Like a part of OpenStreetMap. With that model it could have grown faster too.

As for revenue generation, I feel ads are the best option. As a public transport commuter, you are either a tourist or a new commuter and there would be good ways to find places. Also for budget traveller, help plan a trip via only public transport and avoid taxis.

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

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

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

Citymapper (and other similar companies) often have to establish contracts with transit organizations. They have a team of business folks who figure who and how to get API access. Basically boils down to partnerships in the case that there isn't open data. Most companies like this rely heavily on open data though.

When I interviewed at CM they said they actually provide data back to Google/Apple/TfL. I guess this for analytics, but I’m unsure if they charge companies for their data. As far I know, their Pass weekly transport card is now their biggest source of income.

So if currently the recommended route is simply a function of journey time, could a map have a more sophisticated utility function that takes into account other variables like number of connections, mode of transport and pollution levels etc. Initially the weights of each variable would be unknown (100% to minimising transit time as a sane default) but over time would infer the weights by offering you a range of choices and learning from your preferred selections.

One major flaw with this is that perhaps the map system relies on caching precomputed partial solutions which would be impossible if, in general, every user has slightly different preferences. I've noticed that (AFAICT) Google maps doesn't take into account individual walking speeds when calculating routes for example.

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

Google has started asking me how crowded the bus is so I guess this is coming.

In London you can pretty much choose a slower or cheaper route and it will be less busy. The fastest Tube lines attract more journeys.

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.

I live in Lisbon, Portugal. I use CityMapper with public transport to get around, and it is very good - I particularly appreciate the 'Get Me Home' button. Residents here can get a monthly pass on ALL public transport in the greater Lisbon region for 40 Euros, so I guess that helps too!

Pretty much everyone uses it in London. I've continued using it in Madrid with great success. It's generally very, very good in the cities where it is available.

This is a Google Maps complement, not a replacement, as Citymapper only does navigation within a city, so you can't plan inter-city travel. Also it's optimized for A -> B navigation, not so much for "city discovery", travel research, or more complex itineraries, for which I keep using Google Maps.

I’ve used it in NY and Tokyo. Fantastic app.

The fun part this guys figured out there was demand for a bus line in London just looking at the data, and Transport for London awarded them a licence.

I use it all the time when I'm in a city where they have coverage but Apple Maps doesn't. It exists for a long time already.

Works quite well in Singapore, excepting the occasional glitch with walking routes. And noticeably better than Google Maps at finding public transport connections.

I used it in Manchester and it has hands down the best app UX I've ever used. It did just the right thing at the right time. Shows you exactly where you are regarding your stops, vibrates when it's time to get off, keeps working when you have no data or GPS, and asks you if you want to resume your previous trip if you open it after you close it during a trip.

I am extremely extremely impressed by how absolutely perfect the UX of this app is. I don't know who designed it, but congrats to them. If you haven't used it yet, you must.

I use it daily in Lyon. I like the notifications sent every morning to tell me which bus is the fastest, as my commute to work can be done in different ways.

The official app from the public transport network was revamped last month, and now copies a lot the UX of Citymapper[1], albeit with worse performance. The app use some weird caching system, and sometimes, even after refreshing twice, you don't get the correct timetable, and it's especially bad at reporting traffic alerts. Citymapper never failed me like this.

[1]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.micropole....

I love it when I'm in a city with Citymapper. I've used it to get around Paris, Hamburg and Berlin. It's slick, fun to use and has nailed multi-modal transport - especially since it considers walking a thing which humans are capable of.

I still resort to instructional YouTube videos + ticket machines for tickets, though.

I work for Transport for London and I advise people to use citymapper rather than the official TfL tools.

It’s also really useful for seeing when transport will arrive. Just going into the map mode you will see icons for bus stops, stations, trams etc and you can tap on them to see all the arrivals. Great feature.

I use it often, mostly Berlin and Hamburg (but also Paris, Tokyo and Lisbon): I do not own a car so I mostly walk or use public transportation and the way they handle subways and other types of PT is the best for me.

I use Citymapper over Google Maps all the time in London, and in other cities where it exists.

Last week, I landed in Brussels and needed to catch the train. Google Map's best route was a 40 minute wait for the next train. I opened Citymapper and it suggested a train that, although timetabled for 5 minutes ago, was actually delayed by 10 minutes.

The data coming into Citymapper seems to be much more reliable. Google Maps is a great general tool that works anywhere, but Citymapper puts great attention to work perfectly within cities.

In large urban cities, it's the best app available and far superior to Google Maps.

Multiple transit options with real-time info, delays, prices, and solid offline support. Shows exactly where you are on your trip in terms of signs and stops. Also has little details like which exit facing which direction to leave when getting out at a station which makes all the difference.

I've used it in NYC and Boston - it works really well.

Extensively in London, regularly in Barcelona area and last time I was in Amsterdam. I recommend it to anyone here (Barcelona) since it is not widely known.

London all the time. Very accurate. Barcelona and Paris seem fine too

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).

As a user of Transit (an app similar to Citymapper), I find it odd when I see people fumbling with Google/Apple Maps for transit. The first thing I see when I open Transit is all the nearby transit stop and lines available. That alone is enough to make it more valuable that non-transit specific apps when I need information very quickly.

In my city, Google Maps treats all bus, tram, and subway stops as being at the same point, so it can't help you find the correct bus stop (many subway stops have dozens of connecting bus lines distributed around all exits of the station). Even when it doesn't make you miss the last connection home, it sucks spending ten minutes looking for the right bus stop.

This is the fault of the data provided by the transport companym and even their own app gets it wrong iirc, but somehow CM has gathered the necessary data and even knows which end of the subway train to get on to get to the right exit to find the right bus stop.

* Trip pricing (although Google also has it in some regions) * Offline static maps for your city * Step free and "avoiding rain" routes

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.

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?

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.

Thanks for letting us know.