Each week, Look At Me takes a look at one notable app that's changing the way we think about mobile experiences, and digs into the ideas, the technology, the developers behind the App Store icon. In the new issue - a conversation with the creators of the ETransport application, which allows you to track the movement of urban public transport.
The ETranport application finds the stops closest to the user and displays the direction of movement there. Just select the desired stop, and the application will calculate how many minutes later this or that public transport will arrive.
ETranport provides users with the opportunity to create their own list of favorite stops and routes, so that they don’t have to re-search for the ones they use most often.
The tab with the list of favorite stops and routes can be made the starting one- this will simplify the process of using the application.
The ETranport application also stores in memory the last few stops and routes viewed by the user.
The movement of public transport in the application can be tracked using an interactive map, and according to the list with information about arrival time and distance.
The free ETransport application collects information about the location of urban transport equipped with GLONASS sensors and calculates the arrival time of buses, trolleybuses and trams at a specific stop. The application automatically determines the user's location and prompts him to select one of the nearest stops on the interactive map. Next, the screen displays a list of routes and the time after which one or another public transport will arrive at the stop. Thanks to this, you can save time and plan your route wisely. Also in the ETranport application there is a function for saving favorite stops and the ability to view the history of your movements.
“When we were students and just starting our small business- a mobile application development company - we were missing an interesting project for our portfolio. I wanted to come to a potential client and say: “Do you know ETranport? We did this! That is, initially it was a kind of side project, but in the end it was it that attracted new clients.
The very principle of operation of the application is quite simple - ETransport determines the user’s location and offers to select the nearest transport stops on an interactive map, and then shows the approaching transport and the time after which it will arrive at the stop. The biggest problem associated with the launch of ETranport is that it is necessary to negotiate with the city authorities about the right of access to data from a specific location of all public transport units. In my opinion, this is strange - after all, the convenient service that we create for citizens benefits any government. Moreover, this is simply wrong - such data cannot be hidden, it must be in the public domain. In this regard, St. Petersburg is at the forefront: the authorities there have not only opened this data to everyone, but also encourage developers of such projects (but ETranport is currently considered the best in terms of functionality). In about 40 other cities, no one hides transport location data, but in Moscow they are practically classified.
In the next month we will launch ETranport in 11 more cities in Russia, but for now I cannot disclose information about which cities are included in this list. I think their residents will definitely not miss this event. In Moscow, for example, in the first four days we attracted more than 40 thousand users. Unfortunately, not everyone noticed that Moscow (as, by the way, St. Petersburg) is still in the beta testing stage, and the application does not yet have many stops and routes, and the information about the location of transport may differ from the real situation.
Promo video ETranport
In the future, we will definitely add to the application the function of constructing a point-to-point route, as well as the ability to calculate travel time and even warn your friends about how many minutes you will arrive. We will also remind users in advance that it is time to leave the house so as not to miss their tram, otherwise the next one will not arrive soon. We will pay more attention to ensuring that users can communicate with each other, choose the “King of the Roads” or the “Mayor of the Stop.” We want people to share valuable information with each other (for example, what the line is under control) and discuss various things like rude drivers and singing conductors.
There are five people in our team. I studied at the Gorky USU, where I met Maxim Rovkin, our Android developer. He brought an incredible server-man, Pasha Dick, to our team - on the eve of the most difficult test of the entire study period, he worked all night to ensure that our application launched in Moscow on time and without problems. It’s funny, but we first met our iOS developer Egor Eremeev in person after the release of the first version of ETransport. Egor and Max met when they took the Unified State Exam in different cities (Egor in Naberezhnye Chelny, and Maxim in Yekaterinburg), but they solved tests for the Far East with equal diligence. Designer Pasha Osipkin found us himself - in January 2013, we received a letter from him in the mail, saying that your application is excellent, but the design is crap. So Pasha became part of our team, which we are still incredibly happy about.”
The Yandex company does not stand still and releases more and more useful services that are warmly received by users, firmly settling on their devices. One of these is Yandex.Transport, which is a map where you can build your route based on the movement of public transport.
Before you start using the application, you must first configure it for comfortable use. You will learn how to select modes of transport, city, enable the location of icons for additional functions on the map and much more by reading the article.
Step 1: Install the application
To download Yandex.Transport to your device, open the article link below. From there, go to the application page in the Play Store and click install.
Step 2: Setting up the application
To prepare the map and other parameters, you first need to adjust them to your needs.
- To go to "Settings" click on the button "Cabinet" at the bottom of the screen.
- Next go to "Settings".
- Now let's look at each tab. The first thing you need to do is indicate your city, using the search bar or finding it yourself. Yandex.Transport has information about public transport in about 70 settlements in its database. If your city is not on the proposed list, then they will not offer you anything other than walking or taking a ride in Yandex.Taxi.
- Then choose the type of card that is convenient for you, of which, as usual, there are no more than three.
- Next, turn on or off the following three columns, which are responsible for the presence of zoom buttons on the map, its rotation, or the appearance of a menu when you long press any point on the diagram.
- Enabling "Road Event" involves displaying icons of incidents flagged by application users. Move the slider to the active state to launch this function and select the events that interest you.
- "Cache cards" saves your actions with the card and accumulates them in the device memory. If you do not need to save them, then when you are finished using the application, press "Clear".
- In the tab "Modes of transport" select the type of vehicle(s) you are driving by moving the toggle switch to the right.
- Next, enable the function "Show on map" in the tab "Transport Tags" and indicate the type of transport that you want to see on the map.
- Function "Alarm" will not let you miss the end of your route, notifying you with a signal before approaching your final destination. Activate it if you are afraid of oversleeping the desired stop.
- In the tab "Cabinet" there is a button "Login to account", which provides the ability to save the routes you have built and receive rewards for various achievements (for early or night trips, for using search, alarm clock, etc.), which will brighten up your use of the application a little.
After pre-configuring the settings for using Yandex.Transport, you can go to the map.
Step 3: Using the card
Let's look at the map interface and the buttons located on it.
- Go to the tab "Cards" in the panel at the bottom of the screen. If you zoom in on the area, incident icons and dots of different colors will appear on it, indicating public transport.
- To learn more about a traffic event, tap on the icon indicating it on the map, after which a window with information about it will appear on the screen.
- Click on the mark of any public transport - its route will immediately appear on the diagram. Go to the tab "Show route" in order to find out all its stops and travel times.
- To determine road congestion, the application interface has a button in the upper left corner of the screen. Activate it by pressing it, after which sections of roads from free traffic to traffic jams will be highlighted on the map in several colors (green, yellow and red).
- To avoid searching for the stop and transport you need in the future, add them to "Favorites". To do this, click on the point of the bus or tram on the map, select your stop in its route and click on the heart opposite them. You can find them by tapping on the corresponding icon, which is located in the lower left corner of the map.
- By clicking on the bus icon, you will leave marks on the map for the one you previously selected in the transport settings.
After you have learned about the use of the card and its interface, let's move on to the main function of the application.
Step 4: Building a route
Now let’s look at constructing a public transport route from one point to another.
As you can see, using the Yandex.Transport service is not so complicated, and with its information base you will quickly learn the city and ways to get around it.
What ground transport is passing nearby and when a bus, trolleybus or tram will arrive at the stop can now be found out using the Spb Transport Online mobile application. It processes data from the St. Petersburg public transport portal, which is received using the GLONASS system. Recently, all ground transport in the city has been equipped with it.
The application can be downloaded for free on the developers' website, Google Play or iTunes. It works on iOS, Windows and Android smartphones.
For now, the portal from which the application takes information is working in test mode and sometimes fails, which the developers write about on their blog. Once the map showed only a dozen buses throughout the city, and recently almost all trams and trolleybuses disappeared from it for some time. The system's shortcomings are planned to be corrected in the near future.
The application determines the user’s coordinates and offers to choose the appropriate mode of transport
The application shows in real time the movement of nearby buses and calculates their arrival time at the desired stop
In the application you can see a list of stops on the desired route
The application shows the complete route to your destination
Spb Transport Online determines the user's coordinates and prompts him to choose the appropriate mode of transport: bus, tram or trolleybus. The app then shows you which routes are nearby, marks their location on the map and calculates the approximate time of arrival at the stop. Data is updated every time you move your phone, press the Refresh button, or every 10 seconds when auto-refresh is turned on.
The developers plan to add aquabuses and the subway to the program, the ability to plot your route around the city, taking into account transfers, as well as search for stops near the user and create a schedule for them.
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You can track Rostov transport online (in real time) on our website: .
Department of Transport and ITS Center opened general access to the online urban transport tracking system PIKAS. This even happened somewhat ahead of schedule (today, in a conversation with the employees of the ITS Center, we learned that the opening will take place on October 3, but PIKAS is already working).
The system is available at: its-rnd.ru/pikasonline. If you want to immediately go to viewing a city map with the location of buses, trolleybuses, trams and minibuses in real time, you can use the direct link: its-rnd.ru/pikasonline/#rostov/map (you will need to click on the “show traffic movement” icon ).
Using the service is very easy: The system interface is intuitive and very friendly. However, for those who found it a bit complicated, we have prepared a short video “How to use PIKAS in Rostov-on-Don”:
PIKAS system capabilities impressive. With its help, you can find out where a specific bus, trolleybus, tram or minibus is located and, accordingly, calculate the waiting time at the stop. In addition, the system has schedules for all public transport in Rostov-on-Don. We talked in detail about all the functions of PIKAS in our previous publication, and the main features of the system that are most interesting to passengers are covered in the video above.
Launch of the Pikas system public access became possible thanks to the high-quality and coordinated work of the Department of Transport (Director - Alla Loskutnikova, Deputy Director - Alexander Varich), the Center for Intelligent Transport System (Director - Vasily Zyryanov), Deputy Head of the Administration for Transport and Road Facilities Evgeniy Lebedev, as well as many employees of the Administration of Rostov-on-Don and the region and their leaders. The active position of the public also played an important role, incl. initiative groups of the project “Rostov-Transport.Info” and “Rostov City Transport VKontakte”.
All that remains is to thank all the people involved in the opening of PIKAS for the fact that in Rostov-on-Don there will now also be online monitoring of public transport. Such services are an undoubted attribute of civilized transport systems; they are widespread in large European cities. As for Russia, not every metropolis can boast of the ability to monitor transport via the Internet. It's nice that Rostov has become one of them.
Don't forget that the system will start working in test mode. At the same time, it is likely that there will be some shortcomings and shortcomings. This is a common thing when we are talking about such complex software and hardware systems. The editors of Rostov-Transport.Info express confidence that specialists will carefully monitor the performance of the system and eliminate detected errors, and users (i.e. passengers) will treat this with understanding.
Help Rostov-Transport.Info: The PIKAS software package was developed by the software company Merakas, the company's head office is located in Vilnius (Lithuania). The company specializes in the development of transport dispatch software; its customers include transport enterprises and institutions in Russia, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
This is what the PIKAS system looks like to the user.
Author: Igor NegodaevPublished: 10/02/2015
Relatively recently, Yandex, without any special announcements, released a beta version of a new mobile application - “Transport”. These are city maps that display online the movement of buses, trolleybuses, trams and minibuses. For now, the service is available for public transport in Kazan, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Perm, Nizhny Novgorod, as well as the Moscow region. The developers immediately ask not to pick on bugs, so there is no point in focusing on specific shortcomings yet.
The value of such a system for the common man is difficult to overestimate - it is very convenient to plan movements around the city and think through routes, clearly understanding that the bus will arrive at the stop in 5 minutes or, conversely, in the next 40 minutes you should not wait for mercy from Mostransavto and instead of standing hopelessly in the cold ( in the rain, in the sun) you need to choose alternative travel options - taxi, on foot, etc.
Approaches to implementing such an application may vary, and so far Yandex has chosen a concept that is not the most successful, in my opinion: When you open the application, all the buses that can be placed on the map flash on the screen. Then you can specify a specific route number - then only buses on this route will remain.
The approach implemented, for example, in a similar Ekaterinburg service “Where are the trams and trolleybuses,” seems to me significantly more meaningful. In it, all functionality is tied to stops and the direction of travel from these stops: you select a stop and direction, and the system shows all the trams that will pass through it in the near future in the desired direction.
The developers of “Where is the tram” were clearly more focused on the needs of the user: it is clear that in 99.99% of cases a particular ordinary passenger is not interested in the whole picture of public transport traffic. Moreover, he is not even interested in the movement of all buses or trams on a specific route: Why do I need a bus going in the opposite direction or leaving 5 minutes ago from the stop I need?
The user of such an application is usually interested in the opportunity to leave the place in which he is currently located. It seemed to me that the developers of Yandex Transport have so far thought about this much less than the developers of Where is the Tram.
The further development prospect, in my opinion, is that the user could set the starting and ending points of the route, and the service would display all public transport, the trajectory of which corresponds to the specified parameters.
It would also be interesting to look at a solution that implements routes with transfers, when the user specifies the start and end points, and the service suggests a composite route and takes into account the actual traffic movement. Such an application could suggest that you can get to the transfer point quickly, but at the transfer you will have to wait a long time for the next bus, or vice versa, with a 90% probability the transfer will take place quickly (taking into account traffic jams, statistics and other factors).
In general, I really hope that the service will soon start working in Moscow. I hope that Yandex developers will pay more attention to the overall approach to implementing functionality, and not just to individual technical details.
I also really hope that competing applications will appear in Moscow and the region, whose developers will have not only the skills to draw smooth movement of green dots on the map, but also a meaningful look at the needs of ordinary passengers.
