I’ve written before about my quest to find the perfect transit app for Android. iOS has The Transit App, which is close to perfect (in my opinion) but I have yet to find one as good on Google’s platform.
Transit! is a relatively new entry to the space that supports timetables for most Canadian transit networks, including the TTC, BC Transit and Montreal’s STM. It offers one-touch rundowns of the next few trains, buses or streetcars, a helpful map view and plenty of configurable settings.
The app is free but donations can be made to remove ads (though the $5/$10 amounts are absurdly high) and offers a monochromatic colour scheme, staying close to Google’s design guidelines. At startup, Transit! will locate your position using several GPS satellites; this process generally takes 5-10 seconds depending on your location and line of sight, but once inside, all data downloads fairly quickly.
Thanks to an abundance of freely-available data through NextBus, so this is the same information you’d see from any official transit network. I tested the app against my other favourite, Transit Now Toronto, and the data was identical. The difference is that Transit! is more thoughtfully laid out and eschews many of the unnecessary buttons and icons in favour of a faster, cleaner Holo interface.
The app is regularly updated and has been bug-free in my brief time using it, though I’d love to see the map view updated to Google’s Maps Android API V2 and take less time to acquire a position at startup. You can always tell the app to use a set Preferred Location, but it is unhelpful if you move around a lot.
Download Transit! for Android. The full list of supported transit authorities is below.
Alberta:
Calgary
Edmonton
British Columbia:
BC Transit
TransLink (Vancouver)
Manitoba:
Winnipeg
Nova Scotia:
Metro (Halifax)
Ontario:
Brampton
GO Transit
Guelph
Grand River Transit (Waterloo)
Hamilton Street Railway
OC Transpo (Ottawa)
Toronto – TTC
York Region / Viva
Quebec:
Agence métropolitaine de transport – AMT
CIT
CRT
MRC
Réseau de transport de la Capitale – RTC
Société de transport de Laval – STL
Société de transport de Montréal (Montreal) – STM
Ville de Sainte-Julie
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