Apple Maps Seems To Now Have The Ability To See Public Transit Moving In Real Time In The Greater Toronto Area
Something that I noticed yesterday is that Apple Maps transit support has quietly been improved. It now has the ability to see transit options like buses in real time relative to your location. This was rolled out in Tokyo a month ago, but it now seems to be live in the Greater Toronto Area.
Let me demonstrate.
Let’s say that I want to go from my current location which is a client’s office in Mississauga Ontario to the nearest Home Depot. I enter that into Maps and here’s what I get:
You’ll note what looks like a WiFi icon next to the words “Bus departs at 1:51 PM.” That indicates that it is getting live updates about the location of the bus from the relevant transit operator. In this case, MiWay which also known as Mississauga Transit. If I click on that I get this:
If you look at the third item from the top where it tells me to board the MiWay 39 bus, it has the same icon with the word “More” next to it. Clicking more takes me here:
According to this the bus is “on time”. But there’s one more party trick that I noticed:
If you see the blue bus icon that has the text “50s ago”, that’s a semi live look at where the bus is as I watched it move on the Map. That way, you know roughly where the bus is so that you can ensure that you are at the right stop when it arrives. Alternately you can also see if the bus is running late for whatever reason, which would allow you to make alternate arrangements. That’s pretty cool. I’ve only tested this with MiWay and TTC (Toronto Transit Commission), but it is possible that this also works with other Greater Toronto Area transit operators. If you try this, feel free to drop a comment below and share what you’ve discovered.
The only bad news in this is that apps like Citymapper and Transit may have had their careers ended by this move. But that would depend on how good this addition to Apple Maps really is. Time will tell on that front.
This entry was posted on September 10, 2024 at 1:53 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Apple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Apple Maps Seems To Now Have The Ability To See Public Transit Moving In Real Time In The Greater Toronto Area
Something that I noticed yesterday is that Apple Maps transit support has quietly been improved. It now has the ability to see transit options like buses in real time relative to your location. This was rolled out in Tokyo a month ago, but it now seems to be live in the Greater Toronto Area.
Let me demonstrate.
Let’s say that I want to go from my current location which is a client’s office in Mississauga Ontario to the nearest Home Depot. I enter that into Maps and here’s what I get:
You’ll note what looks like a WiFi icon next to the words “Bus departs at 1:51 PM.” That indicates that it is getting live updates about the location of the bus from the relevant transit operator. In this case, MiWay which also known as Mississauga Transit. If I click on that I get this:
If you look at the third item from the top where it tells me to board the MiWay 39 bus, it has the same icon with the word “More” next to it. Clicking more takes me here:
According to this the bus is “on time”. But there’s one more party trick that I noticed:
If you see the blue bus icon that has the text “50s ago”, that’s a semi live look at where the bus is as I watched it move on the Map. That way, you know roughly where the bus is so that you can ensure that you are at the right stop when it arrives. Alternately you can also see if the bus is running late for whatever reason, which would allow you to make alternate arrangements. That’s pretty cool. I’ve only tested this with MiWay and TTC (Toronto Transit Commission), but it is possible that this also works with other Greater Toronto Area transit operators. If you try this, feel free to drop a comment below and share what you’ve discovered.
The only bad news in this is that apps like Citymapper and Transit may have had their careers ended by this move. But that would depend on how good this addition to Apple Maps really is. Time will tell on that front.
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This entry was posted on September 10, 2024 at 1:53 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Apple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.