How to use your phone to navigate the TTC
These apps can help you make sure you’re not waiting too long in the cold for a bus
When every second spent inside is a precious one, the last thing anyone wants to do is wait indefinitely in the cold for a bus or streetcar. Here are the four best transit apps to make your commutes this winter slightly more bearable: Transit Now Toronto( Android only) is hands-down the better of the two Toronto-specific apps on this list. Its intuitive search feature allows you to choose the route, branch (eg. 42A or 42B), direction and your current stop. It then displays the next time of arrival, which you can tap to see the next four arrival times, as well as mark that stop as a favourite, placing it on your home screen and shaving seconds off the time you would spend searching.
Transit Now Toronto also offers a reminder alarm to let you know when the bus you’re intending to catch is close by. For those unfamiliar with the TTC and those of us who like to catch up on sleep during our commute, a $1.99 upgrade that removes ads and lets you set an alarm just before you’re about to arrive at your stop is also worth considering.
But while Transit Now is incredibly easy to use, it’s still lagging in some areas — it doesn’t come with a trip planner and bombards you with ads. Transit App (Android and iOS), a big-league app popular in cities all over the world, was recently voted the best transit app in Toronto in a BlogTO contest.
Like many others, Transit App lists routes operating closest to where you are, along with their estimated times of arrival in big, bright boxes with colours to match the transit systems the routes fall into. Clicking the boxes lets you change the route direction and mark routes as favourites, which places them at the top of the list. You can also change your location by moving around the map, and the routes change accordingly — useful if, for example, you’re starting your transit journey after getting a ride to a station.
While Transit App is rich with features, it takes a while to figure out. It assumes, for example, that users will know to swipe left or right to switch the route direction. The same applies for its route search function, which doesn’t work at all if you put a space after the route number (e.g. entering 17 will show you the 17 Birchmount bus, but entering “17 Birchmount” will take you to an address on Birchmount Rd.)
The best part of Transit App, which cancels out any minor annoyances, is an integrated trip planner that incorporates every kind of transit available, including Uber. You can also see how many minutes away the closest Uber driver is simply by glancing at the app’s home screen. Rocketman ( Android and iOS), also a finalist in BlogTO’s contest, is similar to Transit App, albeit less professional-looking, with a “Near Me” screen that lists the stops closest to you with arrival times of the next four buses. The cluttered list, which includes several routes, branches, and directions, would look better if it was condensed into route numbers with the option to click through for more info.
Rocketman’s popularity can be attributed partly to its use of seconds, and not just minutes, to count down ETAs — a feature you’ll be grateful for when deciding whether or not you should sprint to catch the next bus.
Loads and refresh times, however, can be fairly slow, and the ETAs sometimes change without a moment’s notice from say, five minutes to a minute and 30 seconds, which means you can rely on Rocketman, but only if you stare at your screen constantly while using it.
Another gaping hole in Rocketman’s system is the inability to search for routes and its absolute reliance on location settings being turned on and working.
Even if you’re a few intersections away from the bus or streetcar route you want to transfer to, you will have to wait until you’re close enough to the stop to see upcoming arrival times.
The app also has ads running at the bottom of the screen, which can be
removed with a $2.99 upgrade. Moovit (iOS and Android), the third finalist in BlogTO’s transit app contest, is feature-rich and polished. Its handy trip planner lets you to save your home and work addresses, making searches more efficient. The app includes a ton of useful, though not unique, functions like service alerts and maps of all the different components of the TTC, as well as maps of other transit systems for viewing. This makes Moovit a truly great option for someone travelling not just in Toronto, but across the GTA.
There are strange inconsistencies between different modes of transport in Moovit’s search function; you can choose a streetcar from a list of route numbers, but you have to search for bus routes manually.
What sets Moovit apart from all the others, however, is that it contains no ads and every feature is free since the app has not yet been monetized. However, Moovit’s CEO has in the past mentioned the possibility of selling location-based ads and aggregated statistical data about where its users are, which may not appeal to everyone.