(Review) Route 411: A new app for Vancity/Edmonton/TO

I just made a quick review on iTunes of Route 411 (@route411 on Twitter), a new iPhone app that supports and uses the open data of Vancouver, Edmonton and Toronto. Unfortunately, it suffers from the same problems our Toronto data does — it’s outdated. Sadly, the only app on the app store that’s got correct Toronto data is my free TTC Mobile app, which loads the data directly from ttc.ca but has few other features since that’s all ttc.ca can do right now.

Anyway, I bought Route 411 since I already had Red Rocket and thought (what’s one more?), so here’s my review of it on iTunes:

I just bought this app and I live in Toronto, so your experience may vary.

From an app design perspective, this app has a few bugs in this version. As another review mentioned, I would also appreciate a Back/Cancel button on the loading screen. But I did notice the up/down arrows above route info, which I thought would change the route direction North/South, instead minimize or maximize the view — so to get back to the map full-screen, you can click the down arrow.

The major problem? TTC data on toronto.ca/open is outdated and so is the GPS and stop data this app is using. I suspected as such, because getting correct data from the TTC is incredibly difficult, and so I applaud Route 411 for trying. Red Rocket and iTTC are both outdated since June ‘09 and Dec ‘08 respectively, and they use cached copies of myttc.ca data — which was unofficial, but was the only option until the TTC attempted to put some data on toronto.ca/open.

In response to Red Rocket being consistently outdated, I invested time in writing a tiny bookmark-style app called TTC Mobile. It’s on the app store now, and is the only one (currently) that’s as up-to-date as possible because it simply loads from ttc.ca directly. This app, Route 411, having been recently released and featuring some sort of online data source, shouldn’t get outdated as quickly as iTTC and Red Rocket did, so there’s still hope.

But until the TTC releases new data with proper stop locations and subway info, all efforts at a good, accurate TTC app are likely doomed for failure unless they’re loading the ttc.ca data directly, or clearly indicate the certainty of the data. (E.g. with a timestamp it was last checked for validity)

As I tweeted (I’m @4lou on Twitter), the 196 stop schedule/times and locations are incorrect. It’s missing newer routes like 41E. In the last 20 minutes, I’ve received frequent “Connection Failed” messages, though that could easily be temporary. Out my front door there’s a few 106 stops which were missing likely because of search limits, the “Route Screen” pane is confusing until you realize it’s supposed to display a route’s pins, and when you search for “196″ it fails, it only works (right now) with “196A” and so on.

While hunting for “Downsview” (subway station), it found the nearest intersection, but stop 524 next to it had no buses and Downsview didn’t appear as an obvious pin. Pins themselves are anonymous, placed covering one-another, multiple pins per actual physical stop, and the pins are not labelled directionally (e.g. with arrows before you click them). Stops are numbered, which I found odd as they aren’t in real life.

But I love the idea of finding routes by what stops are nearby, that’s better executed in some ways than Red Rocket. Still, adding things to favourites is confusing. In my app, I merely added them to favourites automatically, sorted by frequency of use, with a delete function. Perhaps consider that model? And I would appreciate a preference to interpret schedule times as 12-hour rather than 24-hour, or even as relative (3 minutes).

Other than that, thanks for the app, an excellent first release, and I expect great things in the future from this app. (Competition is wonderful!)

Kind of sad that my app is the only one with correct data, yet 43 people voted TTC Mobile as “hate it”. I suspect it’s people who tried the app because it’s free and rated it low when uninstalling. Paid apps don’t have this problem, but within the last 3 weeks, all free apps have been rated 1-2 stars lower than they used to be. Well at least I can feel glad that 55 ratings of my free app are better than “hate it”, with 22 five-star ratings, and tons of good feedback and ideas. Keep ‘em coming.

Oh and since I haven’t posted it yet anywhere on the site, my email address is lou…@gmail.com (click for email address)