One of thing that I need to take a look before deciding to travel in a city, or from one city to another is their public transportation. What kind of transportation the city has, how to access them from the place I am staying for example, or even much more than that.
The android app Transportr will be a big help if you love to travel around, not only in one city. It also enables you to switch transportation company that provide the service, as well as the country of origin.
Here, I would like to show you how to use the app, and maximize the use of it.
What is Transportr?
Transportr is an app that was developed to help its user, so that they can easily access the public transportation nearby or even way further from the place they are accessing it.
As mentioned in their page, the app at the moment works better in Europe, but it does not mean it cannot be use in anywhere else.
Lets take a look in this tutorial.
Installation
First of all, download the app from playstore and install it. Once the app is installed, you have to choose the region. This region will define which transportation (and company) are available there. As shown on the image below
For the first example, I will choose Germany . If I click on the country name, it will show list of transportation. In Germany for example, the choices are VRR, Deutsche Bahn (DB) and so on. If you finish this step, you can actually start using it as you wish
Setting and Configuration
You can change the setting of the app according to your will by clicking on the setting. You can change the theme, language use for the app and the shortcut to get you home.
What can I do with Transportr?
In general the app allows user to search for transportation. But to be more specific, here are the list of things user can do with the app
Search for station
To search for station, click on nearby station. Here you can set your current location as home location, choose location using the map, or if you have previously use the app, current search of location will appear on the page. I will search for nearby station somewhere close to Sportspark Cologne. Click enter, and list of nearby stations will be shown, including the distance from Sportspark as my original point.
Choose the one that is most suitable to access. Let say, I would like to travel to Bonn central station from here. I search for Bonn HBf on the app. It will like an image below.
Click search. And there you are. L The page will show list of transportation, time of travel, how long will it take for you to reach your destination, also how many time do you have to change the transportation along the way from Cologne to Bonn.
Germany in this case, has wide range of choices for transportation. If you look closer on the image above, each time of travel show different length of time when traveling from Cologne to Bonn. Some will show 1.05 hour, some other might be more. This information is really helpful for user,
Search for Departure Time and Type of Transportation
If you need to find out what time a tram or bus leaving from a station, you can use the feature Departure. If you click on it, then type the place you want to search. Here, I will type Bonn HBf
You can choose the time of departure, Now, 15 Minutes later, Today or some other time. I choose that exact time when I use the app, and it will shows both tram departure and buses. Please be careful when you search for this. Do not make mistake in recognizing the type of transportation display on the page. For example in the image above, there are two type of possible public transportation there; bus or tram.
As mentioned above, the app is a very helpful in Europe. But let take a look if I use the app in Australia.
I choose a station in Melbourne, and choose another station around there. It gives an error to my request.
It does prove that at the moment, the app is not working properly or probably still provide some information but not complete in the region other than Europe.
Overall Information
One thing to better now before using the app is you should have a good internet connection. Otherwise it will take forever to search for the station or even your own location cannot be detected be the system.
In general, the app will be really helpful for those who keep traveling from one country to another. You need only one app, instead of installing another once you get into a new place. And it is a recommended app to use.
Looking forward for better improvement in the future
Thanks for reading,
Cheers,
Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors