iPhone for NJT

I will publish new iPhone app to AppStore in next 2-3 weeks. It will help passengers of NJ Transit to be better informed and contains:
.: Route planner to find the best train by entering origin and destination
.: Check schedule for selected station
.: Show stations on map to find closest one and track yourself on map too
.: Maps of rail and light rail systems
.: Show advisories (same as on web site)

Any other features you guys want to see in such app?

Why bother. You cant hold it like a normal person anyways.

sullivan1985 wrote:Why bother. You cant hold it like a normal person anyways.

Hahah, in fact problem is not that big as media reported

I'll just leave this here...

What would be useful to me would be a planner that used all available transit modes to plan a trip; not only NJT rail and light rail, but NJT bus, MCAT, Coach, Academy, etc.

loufah wrote:What would be useful to me would be a planner that used all available transit modes to plan a trip; not only NJT rail and light rail, but NJT bus, MCAT, Coach, Academy, etc.

http://www.hopstop.com

Just published new application for NJ Transit passengers to AppStore

Check it out: http://www.njt-rails.com/

This may seem trivial but what will your icon look like? I have another njt app and the icon is a generic bus (meanwhile the NYC subway icon I have is the iconic subway).

Something like this

i just went out and bought your app, its really nice. i woulda done something similar myself if i didn't have so many other projects . anyway, here are the things i would like to see in future versions to turn this thing from great to totally awesome:

• - a way to see more than just the upcoming trains at the current time you are at
  - integration of departure vision for stations instead of going to NJT station page
  - map view that uses similar tech to google maps (check out the kickmap subway map for an example)
  - advisory splitting by line
  - auto updating advisories
  - advisory push notifications based on line
  - really cool idea: have an alarm go off when you're a mile away from a station, that way i can nap without missing my stop
  - a separate section for just stations, with its own bottom bar button
  - something you can use to monitor the train you're on at the moment, like how many mins away the next stops are, whether you were late at any stops, etc.

i found a bug too, i was seeing how you handled train transfers with a trip from new brunswick to roselle park. after that, i tried going from new brunswick to morristown, and got some valid routes, but when i opened them, i still saw NBK>RPK.

how is your GTFS data updated? are you going to release new app versions as schedules get updated? you might want to add an option to update your schedule data on request, or have it check for newer versions on startup. just a thought.

anyway, that's all i got for commentary on the app, other than that its good stuff, thanks for making it!

Thank you for valuable feedback!

App checks updates of scheduls every time when it starts and download GTFS in background. So it's not necessary to download new version of the app itself. You also will have a message when new schedules downloaded and ready for using.

I really like the idea to have an alarm at some distance before station. Actually I'm going collect all ideas for let's say 1 week and then make decision what to do first and what to do next.

I will check the bug you found and fix it ASAP.

Thank you one more time!

cool, if you need a beta tester or anything, let me know

mach5 wrote:cool, if you need a beta tester or anything, let me know

Sounds great, what device you have?
If you don't mind please send UDID (you can see it in iTunes when device connected) to [email protected]

mach5 wrote:i just went out and bought your app, its really nice. i woulda done something similar myself if i didn't have so many other projects . anyway, here are the things i would like to see in future versions to turn this thing from great to totally awesome:

• - really cool idea: have an alarm go off when you're a mile away from a station, that way i can nap without missing my stop

You can set your own alarm based on the arrival time...