SEPTA has rolled out a brand new model of its smartphone app that goals to make it simpler for riders to shortly discover essentially the most handy bus, practice, or trolley for his or her journey and make journey choices on the fly.
The new iteration of the applying for iPhone and Android units debuted final week, changing an older model launched in 2017.
The app has already drawn each reward and criticism for working considerably in another way than its predecessor. However given shifts in commuting patterns in recent times, and vacationers’ wants for simple entry to real-time arrival info, the app’s designers say they assume SEPTA’s 760,000-plus each day riders will admire it as soon as they offer it a attempt.
“A giant precedence was ensuring that if you open the app, you’ll be able to see and perceive actually shortly the total breadth of choices which might be accessible to you,” mentioned Lex Powers, SEPTA’s director of service info design. “Not simply the station that you realize or the close by bus route that you realize, however every thing that’s accessible and accessible to you, typically even inside only a few blocks.”
Extra updates are on the best way, together with a tweak to the best way Regional Rail departure occasions are offered, mentioned Katie Monroe, the company’s mission supervisor for service disruption communications. Ultimately the detour maps that not too long ago debuted on SEPTA’s web site will even be accessible within the app.
A number of factors of entry
The brand new app has most of the similar features of the outdated one, or close to equivalents.
On the house display, customers can faucet “Close by” to see a map and itemizing of surrounding transit strains, together with arrival occasions for the following couple autos. Once you faucet a route icon on the map, the route seems as a darkish line, with arrows displaying automobile places.
That Close by tab partially replaces the TransitView operate within the app’s earlier incarnation. Customers can pan the map to a distinct spot and reload it to see that space’s routes.
Alternately, riders can go to the Schedules tab, use menus to pick out a line, and go to the map to see routes and automobile places. That’s just like the outdated Subsequent-to-Arrive tab.
Or, from the house display, they will begin typing in a reputation, like “Metropolis Corridor” or “Ardmore,” choose from the locations that pop up, and get an inventory of strains and stops with departure occasions. That’s primarily the outdated Journey Planner operate.
“Within the outdated app, it bumped you out to the online Journey Planner, and that is absolutely built-in into the app expertise,” Monroe mentioned.
Basically, the app was redesigned to be simpler for informal customers, like people who find themselves on a one-time journey, to begin utilizing with minimal effort, Powers mentioned.
“The way in which that folks use transit as we speak is loads totally different than the best way that they used it 10 years in the past, in that individuals are loads much less prone to take the identical journey day-after-day, to repeat the identical journeys on a regular basis,” he mentioned.
The staff’s analysis confirmed that utilizing the outdated app properly “required a excessive degree of information in regards to the SEPTA system,” Energy mentioned. “It was good if you happen to already knew what you needed to do, and also you needed to maintain tabs in your favourite practice or your favourite arrival. It’s simply that the precedence now’s to be extra accessible, to have a decrease barrier of entry.”
Favorites everywhere
Every day commuters needn’t despair, although. The revamped software truly expands the “Favourite” or coronary heart operate utilized by frequent riders to shortly carry up the data they want.
Very like within the outdated app, customers can navigate by means of menus within the Schedules tab to discover a route — e.g., “47 Whitman Plaza to Fifth-Godfrey” — and favourite it by tapping the guts image.
They’ll additionally enter an origin and vacation spot within the Journey Planner, after which favourite and identify the outcomes, for instance as “Morning Commute.” The following time they faucet the identify on the house display, it is going to present all of the route choices for the journey, with real-time arrival occasions.
Customers may also discover a station on the Close by map, or within the Schedules tab, and favourite it there to create a hyperlink to an inventory of upcoming departures.
“There’s a Favourite display that the app will default to if you open it, you probably have any Favorites saved,” Monroe mentioned. “So it ought to be very, very fast for folks to get to the issues that they’ve saved.”
Different options embody a Assist tab to contact SEPTA police, as an alternative choice to the separate Transit Watch app, or to contact customer support. (You may as well nonetheless use Transit Watch.) An Account tab lets customers purchase and handle Key Playing cards and Key Tix.
Monroe mentioned the event staff “enormously improved” the app’s accessibility options. It makes use of instruments constructed into iPhones and Android units to learn the contents of the screens and assist visually impaired riders discover the data they want.
The app makes use of the new route names and indicators that SEPTA is introducing throughout the system, for instance by renaming the Market-Frankin Line the “L” and the Broad Avenue Line the “B.” That rollout “is about to speed up to an excessive diploma” and the brand new app ought to assist folks get used to it, Powers mentioned.
The brand new app is supposed to compete higher in opposition to rivals that present the identical primary real-time info, reminiscent of the favored Transit App, Google Maps and Apple Maps. CapTech, the contractor that constructed the app, says it’s been downloaded 160,000 occasions to this point.
The improve can also be half of a bigger set of buyer expertise enhancements that embody the brand new wayfinding system, a brand new web site, an answer for the “ghost bus” downside, and modifications to detour notifications.
Change may be exhausting
Some early adopters of the brand new app praised the replace. One Reddit person described it as “clearly extra polished and thought out” than the earlier model. One other, who not too long ago moved to Philly, describes the outdated app as “terribly organized for somebody unfamiliar with SEPTA,” and mentioned they preferred the brand new search bar, which eliminates the necessity to peck by means of a number of menus.
A couple of folks appreciated the elimination of an occasional pop-up asking the person to obtain up to date schedules. That now occurs routinely, with out the person needing to do something.
A number of riders mentioned the app repeatedly crashed; Monroe mentioned that was attributable to a bug primarily affecting some iPhone customers, which was patched in an up to date model.
The majority of the complaints have been from longtime customers who have been have been irritated that their outdated Favorites have been deleted and needed to be recreated — Monroe mentioned that was unavoidable, attributable to a change within the app’s underlying construction — or that the brand new app appears to have misplaced key options or made them exhausting to search out.
“I preferred the Stay View of the buses to see precisely the place they’re and now it’s like leaping by means of hoops simply to get to a stay map view for some purpose???” one particular person wrote. “The UI seems aesthetically nicer however why do I discover it even more durable to navigate lol.”
These forms of feedback are frequent when SEPTA modifications the best way it supplies info to clients, Powers mentioned.
“We went by means of one thing related with the web site, the place we took away Transit View and Practice View, however we’ve changed them with instruments which have loads of the identical performance, slightly below totally different names,” he mentioned.
A FAQ part of SEPTA’s web site addresses just a few of the highest points customers have requested about because the new app got here out.
Respite for Regional Rail riders
One main criticism got here from Regional Rail riders who now see a countdown, e.g., “Departure: in 28 minutes,” for the following practice moderately than a clock time like “Departure: 11:40 am.”
Some mentioned the brand new format made it exhausting to inform when the practice would truly be there, for instance when there’s a shifting delay, and had led them to overlook their trains.
The brand new app adopted the countdown format throughout modes of journey, nevertheless it’s develop into clear that clock occasions are particularly helpful for Regional Rail riders who establish their practice by its departure time, Powers mentioned. An replace is coming this week that may revert the rail data to clock occasions, he mentioned.
A couple of folks have been additionally sad that the app not permits real-time monitoring of a number of routes, and doesn’t present a number of route strains and autos on a map without delay.
SEPTA’s web site nonetheless provides that performance, and the designers mentioned they’ll think about bringing it to the app sooner or later.
“Please, proceed to provide us suggestions on the app,” Monroe mentioned. “We’re monitoring all of these issues, and conserving monitor of how typically we hear these complaints, and enhancements that we will make.”