It’s a weeknight. You’re at happy hour when suddenly your internal “I’m too old to be up this late on a school night” alarm goes off. So you say your goodbyes and head to the metro to make your way home. Except you get there just in time to see the train pull away from the platform dooming you to a 20 minute wait. 19 minutes later your friends show up from the bar and get on the same train you do. It’s only 20 minutes wasted, but it’s the principle of the thing. It’s not fair they’re going to get home at the same time you are.
The DC Rider iPhone app layout is simple enough. You’re presented with the standard DC Metro map. Touching a station brings up a webpage inside the app with the arrival times for that station updated in real time.
What the app does isn’t particularly groundbreaking – it’s pulling information directly from WMATA’s website – but it’s free and more efficient than their mobile page which isn’t very user friendly. The app also comes with a few interesting bonuses.
Tapping “Details” under the arrival times displays events taking place near that stop (sometimes these events have actually already happened) and if you’re one of those people that just has to connect every single aspect of your life to Facebook somehow, you can do that too. DC rider lets you sign into your Facebook account and sound off on your Metro line of choice. It even collects any tweet mentioning WMATA so you can get your fill of people complaining about their commutes on the go.
In the end though, it’s really just the simple ability to quickly find out when a train is coming and bookmark stations you’re going to be checking up on regularly that make DC Rider worth downloading.
Those not in DC may have a harder time finding real-time rail arrivals in their own cities, but the mobile versions of MTA.info and transitchicago.com for New York and Chicago respectively offer some help. The CTA even lists a number of apps for download.
I’m definitely going to try this out next time I’m in DC. The MTA version for NYC is decent as well although I didn’t get to use it all that much on my last trip to NYC. For me the convenience of having a map & schedule on my phone (which I always carry with me) is enough of a reason to get apps like this.
We used TransitGenie in Chicago and it was incredible! We’d simply enter our destination and a list of viable bus/rail combos would appear including ETA, walking distances, and real-time bus arrival times. After using it for just an hour we were stunned at how accurate it is.
The only caveat is that it drains batteries, so you have to remember to leave the app before sleeping the phone.
An app that just shows rail times is kind useful. When you couple that data with bus data then you really have something.
By smartphone you mean only on iPhone?
To my knowledge, the Post hasn’t released any of its apps on Android (which sucks BTW).
There is MeetroDC for Android which has similar functionality for tracking Metro schedules. It’s not as fancy but it does the job.
I wonder if the Post will be supporting Android anytime soon?
Thanks for this well written and informative post! I’ve definitely found myself in the situation you described, too many times. Does this app have any similar functionalities for bus schedules?
Tom, I slightly tweaked KC’s post. He had originally said iPhone in that sentence. But I swapped that for smartphone to encompass additional apps, platforms, and cities as this is a growing trend.
I’ve had the NYC subway map on my phone since the app store pretty much opened. Definitely a must have when I’m up there and much neater than carrying around a pocket guide. In DC (where I know the lines/stops), I just wait at the station – I expect delays and don’t trust the listed times. Guess I’m a pessimist (after formerly commuting by subway for 6 years).