London Banter - View Single Post

David Cantrell · August 21st 12, 10:57 AM posted to uk.transport.london

On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 10:22:39AM +0000, d wrote:
On 20 Aug 2012 09:59:13 GMT
Neil Williams wrote:
Perhaps borrow one for a bit. I said a while ago that journey planners
were the best thing that ever happened to public transport. Add a
smartphone, and it truly is a "killer app". Try it before you reject the
idea totally.
I'm not buying a smartphone just to read a map. Navigating a metro system
is hardly rocket science. A map on a wall is all anyone needs unless they're
terminally stupid and need to be spoon fed even the simplest information.

If you'd actually used a journey planner, you would know that you are
talking about something completely different. A mere map can't include
all the buses, or know how frequent they are, and how frequent all the
trains are, or which lines are open, and so be able to find the best
route for you across all modes of transport and tell you how long it'll
take (kinda important for when you have to get from your hotel to the
station to get your train home), taking into account your preferences
for number of changes, how far to walk etc.

Add to that travelling in a foreign country, where you might not be able
to read things like "this station is closed at weekends" or "北京地铁",
and you will see that an application running on your phone in your
language is clearly better than a map.

I recommend this one http://metro.nanika.net/.

--
David Cantrell | Reality Engineer, Ministry of Information

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