Comment by Doctor_Fegg | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Doctor_Fegg | Hacker News Reader

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Consumer-facing routing is a commodity these days. Apple and Google's bundled maps/routing products get better by the month and are sweeping all before them. The only exit strategies for Citymapper that I could ever see were "get acquired by Apple/Google" or "firesale", and although the latter might be a bit harsh, TechCrunch suggests investors weren't exactly laughing all the way to the bank.[1]

If you can identify a niche and keep your costs down then you might have a chance. Apps targeted at enthusiast cyclists continue to do well, for example, although I have my doubts about expenditure vs revenue for some of them. (Disclaimer: I run a small-scale cycle routing app/site.)

But "people who want to get around Western European and North American cities" is not a niche that Apple/Google were ever going to overlook.

[1] "Citymapper investors are mostly not making their money back in the transaction and that it’s effectively a washout": https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/16/via-acquires-trip-planning...

This is too bad because Citymapper is a great app and Google Maps is still very far from providing the same quality as specialized apps for public transit routing.

The one advantage these specialised apps can have is their hyper-specific transit suggestions, which are custom per city. For example, in London Citymapper will suggest to wait and board front/mid/back of the platform to align yourself better with exits at your destination.

Apple and Google tend to be slower to add suggestions like this because they scale poorly to other cities. But it's only a matter of time before they add them.

> For example, in London Citymapper will suggest to wait and board front/mid/back

This never seems as useful as it should be because I'm missing a reliable way to know which direction a London Underground train will approach from?

There is a red stop light, but many stations have these at both ends of the platform. Is there some signage or other piece of infrastructure that gives it away?

When I was in Tokyo last week google maps had carriage suggestions

Google also shows prices there and not in London.

Google has a policy of requiring transit agencies to provide APIs and use standard formats, while Citymapper tries to make each city feel like its own app with lots of effort put in.

There's also a bit of jank where the model represents country-specific stuff. For example a handful of people floated the idea of women-only sections in busses in the UK, so Google categorized it as a country where users might want to know women-only-status. Now every single public transit route in the UK has a pill that says "No Women's Only Section".

Issues with Google (I'm not familiar with Apple maps) maps are the cost and inflexibility. It can't do routing for non standard vehicles taking into account height limits, same side routing, hazmat etc

> If you can identify a niche

It is sad: not everything should be concentrated in Apple's and Google's services. We have to support the other options.

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