Routesy San Francisco

By Brandon Carter Meixel on January 4th, 2009
Our Rating: :: RECOMMENDED
iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad

Routesy is a San Francisco MUNI bus, cable car, and streetcar schedule database app combined with nearest stop estimation by way of Location Services and arrival time predictions from nextbus.com.

Knowing public transportation schedules is something every urbanite should have as a second nature. I’ve been impressed by a few people that can fire off connecting bus lines without even thinking, even telling you what time increments they arrive in. I need an iPhone for these kinds of things! Luckily there are a handful apps that serve exactly this purpose, and Routesy happens to be the most polished of them.

The user interface is quite nice when compared to their web brothers and sisters like nextmuni or munitime. Upon launch you’re presented with all of the MUNI lines (whether they are in service or not) and you can simply scroll through them to find the line you want to take. Once a line is selected, Location Services will kick in and estimate the intersection nearest to you to board that bus. Underneath that nearest stop, you find all of the subsequent stops on that line with their approximation in distance. One confusing element: the listing of other stops aren’t necessarily in the order the bus travels in, so watch out! Selecting a bus line yields a page with how long you’ll have to wait for the next three buses along with a map that can also be viewed in iPhone’s Google Maps app.

Routesy is very handy for those who live and die by public transportation in San Francisco. It’s very convenient – knowing whether or not I have to rush to catch a bus is a handy tool indeed. A few features I think would be useful if added are the ability to bookmark certain lines or stops, and the capability of entering in a start and end point to have Routesy spit back a public transit itinerary. Sometimes the app crashes on launch, seemingly tied to how good of a data connection the iPhone has: the app is snappy on wifi, but if EDGE is weak it’ll take a couple of launches to get it going. However, this still beats waiting for a web based app to load all of the content.

At 2.99 I think Routesy is only attractive to the niche that is on San Francisco MUNI every day. For a guy like me that doesn’t have a car and rarely leaves the city limits, I find it worth the price, but if you’re coming to SF for a visit it might be better to use a web based app and save the bus fare!

Routesy Pro Bay Area San Francisco Muni, BART, Caltrain, AC Transit

iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Buy Now: $4.99

Our Rating: :: RECOMMENDED
Read Our Full Review >>

Released: 2008-07-11 :: Category: Navigation