Embark Plans 1.3M Transit Trips Since Apple’s Release Of iOS 6 | Hacker News Reader

Embark Plans 1.3M Transit Trips Since Apple’s Release Of iOS 6

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68 pointsdavidwhodge40 comments

Embark is pretty good but it doesn't solve the "what's the fastest way from this random location in SoHo to Port Authority" problem. I can tap on two stations and find the fastest way between them, but Google would tell me which option to take, of which there are a lot:

* Walk to W4th, A train (or C/E train) directly to Port Authority

* BDFM from Bway/Lafayette to W4th, A train

* BDFM from Bway/Lafayette to NQR at 34th, walk from 42nd.

* NR from Prince to 42nd

* 6 from Bleecker/Spring to Union Square, NQR to 42nd. This is a long and annoying transfer, which Google probably picked up on.

* 6/NR -> L -> ACE (probably not)

Since Embark's map is the stylized subway map, it doesn't really help with geographic locations.

There are other situations like this: should I take the J train at Bowery directly over the bridge and walk for a while on the other side, or should I walk to the 6 and take the L train under the river, getting off much closer to my destination? The estimated walking time factors into this - if there's a J train about to arrive and I'll narrowly miss the 6, the answer is obvious. If I'm going to have to wait for both, my time is better spent walking to a train that will get me closer to my destination.

hey natesm,

Thanks for your feedback. We always appreciate advice on how to improve Embark. I'm not 100% sure this is what you're referring to, but Embark does allow you to plan a trip between arbitrary locations and compare the times. You can type in a start and end address if you like.

As you pointed out, this cannot be done from the map directly because it is a "schematic map" of the subway system. This is one of the tradeoffs of having a recognizable map where stations are easy to identify. Trip planning is certainly not a problem we address visually, but we will give you results that we think will get you there the fastest.

Great app. One piece of feedback I have which affects me is commuting from Hoboken, NJ to a place in NY. It basically requires me to take 2 different public transportation systems and Google was able to handle that scenario pretty well.

I'm pretty sure it's a low priority but it does affect some people (namely me!)

Thanks for the suggestion. We'll keep that in mind.

Hey guys, David here from Embark. If you have any requests for features or for new cities, we'd love to hear it.

Toronto PLEASE!

I like the navigation on your website. I suggest that it should include a list of cities currently under development and the copyright year should be 2012 :)

noted! Toronto is definitely on our radar. thanks

What the hey... I'd love to see support added for the Minneapolis/St. Paul area.

okay thanks for the suggestion. It looks like they have the data we need to make an App there. We'll look in to it.

In the meantime, check out http://tctransit.mobi. (shameless plug)

Seattle! Metro, Light Rail, and SLUT lines would be amazing!

Here's some GTFS feeds: King County Metro - http://www.gtfs-data-exchange.com/agency/king-county-metro-t... the above feed includes King County Metro buses, Seattle Streetcar (the SLUT cwe mentioned), Sound Transit Link light rail, and some Sound Transit express regional buses.

Sound Transit (buses and Link Light Rail) - http://www.gtfs-data-exchange.com/agency/sound-transit/

Community Transit (Snohomish County, lots of bus routes from up there down into downtown Seattle) - http://www.gtfs-data-exchange.com/agency/community-transit/

Barcelona

Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately we do not have the GTFS data we need in Barcelona to create a great transit app. If you're local, we'd appreciate any help we can get in obtaining that data from the local govt. If you have a second, please drop me a line!

As far as I can tell, you guys don't have a multi-modal app that works for the Bay Area. I need to take Muni, Bart, Golden Gate, VTA, and Caltrain on a regular basis. Is this planned?

Thank you for seemingly setting your coverage areas properly. It seems like some of the transit apps are just saying "we cover the US" and then when launched they say "routing is unavailable in that area".

Apple limits you to 20 areas, so sometimes you need to generalize these coverage areas in order to fit under the limit.

Ugh, that's not good. It's also interesting that you can update your areas in iTunes Connect without any review, so there's no friction to just saying "continental US".

So what is the business model here? Just introduce ads at some later point? I see they have plenty of investors and it looks like a great service. I just hate not knowing how people plan to make money off of me.

Are there any thoughts for including bike routes or that ilk?

I live in the east bay (Berkeley, CA), and when I go to San Francisco, I often want to see what it might be to take BART + finish on a bike. This is opposed to finding a place to park. Just knowing what "bike routes" or bike lanes near to my stations is usually helpful.

This is also because BART + bike is usually a nice time vesus BART + Muni.

hi tristan,

This is definitely something we're investigating. We haven't seen a ton of requests for it frankly, but we have an office full of bikers... So we get it and we will be looking in to it.

Yeah, I do believe this is one of those cases that might be hard to do right and keep the UI simple, to implement easily.

That won't stop me from requesting it. :)

Good luck!

Just wanted to say that I would love to see this as well. Actually though, what I'd love to do is be able to compare taking the bus and biking to 19th Street BART from my apartment near Lake Merritt (in Oakland). I'd also love a way to see what the optimal times for me to leave are, based on the schedule for the bus near my house, BART, and MUNI Metro. I want a way to see the optimal times to leave that will minimize my wait times at each location. I would also love a way to adjust the amount of buffer time for transfers in the App, because one of my complaints with all transit apps is that they make assumptions about how fast of a transfer I can make. I would even go so far as to say you should allow users to adjust this setting on a trip by trip basis, and allow them to bookmark trips/routes. Anyway, I have many more ideas. Let me know if you'd like to hear more of them!

Not quite relevant to the article, but the Android version of the app (NYC one, at least) crashes on opening around 50% of the time for me. Although the resulting error message is laugh-worthy[1], it's still kind of annoying.

[1] http://instagr.am/p/P5m0mQNWSq/

hey untog, sorry to hear about that. We'll look in to it. What kind of device do you have? That's certainly not the norm.

I'm on an HTC One S. I'll admit that it's rooted and has CyanogenMod running on it, though- if no-one else sees the issues I do then it might just be my weird setup.

I have a Galaxy S3 and this has been the norm for me. It crashes quite often and if it's been running in the background for any length of time and I try and open the app it will crash immediately most of the time.

In their desire to shed themselves of Google, Apple has opened a window of opportunity for 3rd parties to enhance their own maps' utility. History suggests, however, that this window will be small, and I expect in the long term, the best bet for the 3rd party apps is to be acquired by Apple.

No San Francisco MUNI, huh? What are iOS 6ers using for this?

Google maps via a browser, or relying on memory..

I'm loving The Transit App but it does have a subscription model.

I tried mapping a trip with Transit, but I couldn't figure out where to see alternate routes. Maybe I should look more closely at it.

On top of the route screen there's a panel with <-, X and route info, tap on that route info middle part

Bicycles.

Routesy has MUNI and looks pretty nice, at least on my iPod touch.

That's me! Thanks for the kind words! I'm currently working on routing, and hope to have something ready to ship really soon. :)

Yeah, I'm a fan of Routesy too. Thanks for the app! Definitely looking forward to seeing what you do for routing...

Try HopStop.

HopStop is much better IMHO. It can show real maps for one thing, and supports multiple transit agencies.

I have been using iBart for some time - I didnt realize it was by Embark until today.

I LOVE the app. It is beautiful, useful and just a great app.

I have one feature request: "LEAVE NOW" notifications.

I would like to setup trips with a desired arrival time, and would like an alert telling me to "leave now" to make that trip, or a "leaving now will result in an arrival time of [X]" button that will tell me when i would arrive should i leave at that time.

There are a range of features I could add to this - but the base app is great...

For example, I like to leave my house around 8am

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