What to know
- Transit’s new Share Trip feature launched Sept. 1, allowing riders to share their public transit journey with friends and family in real time.
- Riders can share a link showing their location, route and estimated arrival time, with the information updating if there are delays, missed buses or route changes.
- The feature can be used as an extra layer of safety, including by students travelling to school alone or anyone who wants someone to know where they are during their commute.
- The trip automatically stops sharing once the rider reaches their destination, so they don’t have to manually turn it off.
The popular public transit information app Transit has just launched a new feature that allows users to share real-time commute updates with friends and family.
Used by over half a million GTA commuters, Transit is a public transit information app available in 1,000 cities across the world, which allows users to plan trips, and track bus locations, disruptions and detours in real time.
Starting on Sept. 1, the app now also allows users to share this information with other users of their choice.
“I think one of the things that makes it special is it’s not just your location, not just where you are, which other apps can do, but really is tied into the transit system so that you have the ETA of your journey,” Jake Sion, COO of Transit, told Now Toronto.
“If your bus is delayed, the ETA will update. You don’t need to send 12 texts and a play-by-play to family members every time there’s a delay. It’ll keep the trip updated for anyone you share it with.”
How it works
To use the new feature, users can start a GO trip and select “Share Trip” to generate a link to the Transit app, which they can then share with whomever they choose.
Link recipients can then follow along in real-time, being able to access the rider’s location and ETA. If the rider misses a bus, takes an alternate route or faces disruptions, the app will then update the ride and ETA.
Once the rider reaches their destination, the app will automatically stop sharing the information.
Link recipients don’t need to be signed into the Transit app in order to see the real-time information, and can access it through their browser.
An extra layer of safety
With many students now preparing to begin the academic year after Labour Day, the new feature could also be an extra layer of support for parents whose children take public transit to school, allowing them to follow them through the route and receive an estimate of when they will arrive at school or at home.
“Imagine you’ve started high school [and it’s] your first time riding transit by yourself. You can choose to share a link with your parents so that they know [for example,] Jake got on the bus and he’s going to be home at six o’clock,” Sion explained.
Although the app’s executives chose to launch the feature at this time of the year, Sion pointed out that it can be used by everybody, including those who just want to feel a bit safer while taking transit.
“Just knowing the same way you would text a friend, the same way you might use ‘Find My,’ the same way if you take an Uber ride and you have a feature that shares that you’re on an Uber trip. It’s really about that. It’s bringing this experience to public transit,” he said.
“A lot of what we try to do at Transit is to make people want to ride the bus, make people like it, and to choose public transit over taking a car.”
A more convenient way to share
Besides bringing a sense of safety to parents and riders, Sion said the new feature hopes to make commutes more convenient for riders in a variety of ways, including making it easier to coordinate with friends and family.
As explained by him, because of the app’s unique features that share not only the real-time location but information about the bus route, route changes, and ETA, it could also make it easier for riders to find each other while commuting or even warn each other about disruptions or wrong routes.
“It’s bringing this experience to public transit so that you’re able to feel that ‘OK, someone knows that I got on the bus’ or even your friend [to] tell you, ‘Jake you’re going the wrong direction,’” he said. “It’s really making that transit experience more fun.”
The new feature comes months after Transit announced a year-long pilot partnership with the TTC in June, which powered the app with free premium service for all TTC riders, AI-powered detour information, and more accurate real-time data.
