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Comment by folkrav | Hacker News Reader

Just chiming in with another option. May have been cause they are Montreal based, but back when I still lived there and regularly used public transport, Transit[1] was my favorite.

[1] https://transitapp.com/

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Transit's UI is superior to any other comparable app, but I find CityMapper's routes superior (at least in NYC).

I've also had issues with Transit surfacing incorrect bus routes based on cancelled buses (but scheduled) which CityMapper somehow could account for. Transit knows the next scheduled bus two minutes away isn't "live" (icons are different) but still surfaces it as a primary suggestion, while Citymapper wouldn't.

Citymapper lets me navigate NYC like a local even if I only visit a couple times a year. It gives transit options taking into account real-time location and time to navigate not just to the subway station but through it. It gives me the street corner I should enter and the the underground exit I should use at the end of my ride. I love it and hope it continues to be great.

+1 for transit. (I’m also predictably from Montréal haha)

The crowning feature of Transit is the GO trips that let you share you location while on a bus with others. For bus arrival accuracy there’s nothing better. It’s probably saved me a flight or two before, by just making sure I get the 747 bus to the airport.

i use transit in LA (where it's the default app for metro) and it has a huge glaring UX failure in that the departure times list at the bottom of the line details screen takes up at least a 1/3 of the screen, and when you want to see more of the map and try to push the list down, it closes the details screen. it's so frustrating, because i end up doing this 2-3 times per use, needlessly tapping back and forth. there's already a close button available so scroll to bottom to dismiss is wholly unnecessary. the departure times list wastes a ton of precious screen real estate as well - it could simply be a comma-delimited list on one line that could scroll sideways, and thus obviating the need for 1/3 of the screen for mostly whitespace.

i do like that the departure times are (slightly) more accurate because of the crowd-sourcing. however, the underlying data from metro is a mess, so they end up looking bad anyway because trains and buses still show up (or don't) unexpectedly due to metro's unreliable data.

I like Transit when it works, but (as of a year ago) it routinely crashed. And transit directions are uniquely hard to restart midway, as it's hard for the app to detect what bus you're on without knowing when you got on.

I like Transit for their quick at a glance public transit arrival times in NYC, but generally prefer Citymapper's overall step-by-step directions and multi-modal transit options. That being said Citymapper did put a bunch of things behind a paywall in the last few years that have made it less useful outside of pure public-transit directions.

I think Transit works great for status updates for buses or trains you're already familiar with. If I'm travelling an unfamiliar route, it's always Citymapper. Plus the fact that Citymapper suggests which part of the train to board for proximity to the nearest exit? Amazing.

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