I love trains. I like them so much that even though I’m 27 now, I still don’t have a driver’s license. I travel by train and use public transport exclusively to move around in my daily life. The island I grew up on had none of that and because of it the car became a basic necessity for most of the people there. But I’m lucky enough to now live in mainland France, in a city where I can get anywhere fairly quickly by hopping on a bus, tram, train or even a high-speed train.
The result is that I spend a lot of time on the phone every day looking up transport plans and glancing at wait times. As with most places in the world where public transport is a thing, you can use the public transport authority’s app or website for this. However, there is a universal truth about these apps and websites: they almost always are really bad. They are slow, confusing and often cluttered with useless information. This is why I have been a big fan of the Transit for so many years now – since I first arrived in France in 2014.
Transit is an amazing app that lets you search for transit plans and will even guide you as you travel to your destination. The app has been around for a long time, but my mission today is simple: I want to tell you why I believe Transit is still the best-designed public transit app available on the iPhone right now.
Let’s get into it.
When you think about it, if you travel by bus, tram or train every day, you already know your way around the network pretty well, especially when you just want to get to the places you visit often – it could be home, work, the main city train station, your favorite restaurant or place friend. This means that most of the time, you won’t necessarily need to look up a route plan in a public transport app. Instead, what you’ll need is an effective way to evaluate your options. What lines can I use from here? How long will I wait? Where exactly is the station?
Transit’s competitors Moovit, Citymapper, and even Apple’s transit integration into Apple Maps have never clicked for me for this reason. They usually want me to start typing in the destination or fiddling around with the user interface, rather than throwing that information out right away. In Transit, on the other hand, the first thing you see when you open the app are the wait times of all the queues around you. It absolutely made me want to use the app in 2014, and it’s still the main reason I love it so much today. Wherever I am in the city, I can just tap the app icon on my home screen to instantly get an overview of my options for getting to my next destination, complete with real-time wait times. I can usually manage myself from there and can close right from the app. Other times, if I need more guidance, I can just tap a line and follow the instructions.
For those moments when I’m on a line I don’t know well or when I’m in the huge maze that is Paris, Transit is an app I often rely on. Over the years, the app has been pretty good at supporting the latest features in iOS, the latest of which is support for Live Activities in Dynamic Island and on the lock screen.
Transit’s live activities are the best use of Dynamic Island I’ve seen so far. It’s a perfect use case for the feature. It happens to the best of us: you’re on a train, not paying attention to your surroundings, reading today’s headlines on your phone, so it’s easy to miss a stop. For this it is incredibly useful to see the number of remaining stops at the top of the screen. The dynamic island will expand by itself when you are two stations away, and then again when you need to go down.
To be honest, I use this feature even on trips I know by heart, just because it relaxes me knowing the app has my back in case I get too distracted.
Transit is a beautiful app in the way it combines satisfying animations, fast interactions and super smart design. First, I mentioned how the app’s main screen is a display of nearby lines and their wait times. Another thing about the app that is extremely simple and smart is the way it displays suggested itineraries.
When you select a destination in Transit, itinerary suggestions appear on the timeline. For each proposal, you can quickly see the number of lines you will need to use, the duration of each change and the time required to walk to and from the stations. Best of all, since all of the suggested itineraries are on the same timeline, you can compare them directly. I’ve never been able to find another transit app that allows me to find the best itinerary this way. Of course, some of them may allow you to change a few preferences in the settings: would you rather walk or reduce the waiting time? The problem for me is that it depends. Sometimes I’m fine with walking, but sometimes I just want to get to my destination quickly. Thanks to this clever design, the Transit allows me to make that choice in an instant.
This thoughtful design is present throughout the application. I’m amazed at how carefully every single data point is placed in the interface without feeling overwhelming at all. Your estimated arrival time is exactly where you’d expect it to be (in Live Activity, as well as at the top of the itinerary view). Gestures to navigate the app feel natural. Almost anywhere in the app, you can drag views down to return to the previous screen. This is complemented by the subtle use of tactile feedback that ties the entire user interface together.
I’ve always found the performance of the Transit to be significantly better than its main competitor, the Citymapper. A key example of this is the map view of each application. Navigating the map in Citymapper is a bit of a pain. You can’t get a clear view of the lines, location pins take a while to load, and panning the map is a 20 FPS experience at best. The main difference here is that Citymapper uses Google Maps as the map provider, while Transit uses Apple Maps. This obviously makes a huge difference: navigating the map in Transit feels super smooth in comparison. I encourage you to try the two side by side; it’s hard not to see.
To be fair, Citymapper is not available in my hometown. The app can only be used in a few cities in France, which unfortunately does not include Grenoble. I used it regularly when I lived in Lyon a few years ago. But nowadays I can only use it once a month when I’m in Paris. However, it is never a great experience for me. I struggle a lot with the density of information in Citymapper.
However, I will admit that Citymapper is great at one thing: notifying you of service incidents. Transit integrates them into the app, but Citymapper lets you see all current incidents in one place, which is super handy. I’m also impressed by the amount of local transport services that Citymapper always manages to integrate into its app. Overall, the Citymapper experience seems particularly well-tailored for the urban areas it covers – which probably explains why it’s not as widely available as Transit.
Still, the Transit has always impressed me with its ability to scale and down depending on where you are. The app’s user interface is quick and easy, whether I’m in Grenoble with its relatively small five-line tram network or Paris with its incredible metro and RER network. Of course, when you’re in the underground stations of the Paris Metro, Transit provides you with information you wouldn’t see in a smaller city: which platform you need to get on, which exits you need to look for, and even which end the next train you should board should be at closer to the exit upon arrival. Yet these never feel out of place. They appear when needed and disappear if you ignore them. And the user interface, in general, remains just as intuitive and efficient.
While some of its competitors need to tailor their experience for each city, the fact that Transit’s user interface easily scales without manual adjustments by the user is a testament to its beautiful design. If you’re not already a fan and the app is available where you live, I recommend giving it a try.
Transit is available for free in the App Store, with an optional $5 monthly subscription (or $25 annually) to unlock more nearby lines in the main view, access to all line layouts, additional app icons, and custom color themes.