iPhone App Review - SJ Transit Lite v 2.0

New update for VTA Transit app

Category: Navigation

Updated: Jan 17, 2012

Version: 2.2.1

Size: 3.2 MB

Language: English

See previous review for SJ Transit.

Tuesday the author of VTA Transit Lite posted a completely new version of an existing transit app on the iTunes store. This was most likely to coincide with VTA's normal January schedule of changes.  As I mentioned in the previous review the app was not much better than the traditional paper maps that it was intended to replace.

Map view showing bus stops

Even with my lack of support for this app it will never really be useful until there is some type of GPS or "Next Bus" type of functionality included with it. Given the spread out suburban nature of the Santa Clara Valley, many times it doesn't matter what time the bus should be there, but where is it now and when is expected to arrive at its destination. This is especially important in the valley due to the less frequent schedules compared with San Francisco's which see buses every 5 minutes on some routes. If you miss one bus another will be along shortly.

I checked out the new version on iTunes and the screenshots looked promising so I downloaded the app even after reading that it was prone to crash. After downloading the app the user is required to download the data portion of the program; a 10MB file containing the time schedules. This is a good idea since it frees users from having to download a new app for each VTA schedule change. The download took less than five minutes.

Route View showing
 both directions

After the download was complete I started the SJ Transit Lite back up and was elated at the many positive changes the author made to the app. A long awaited "favorite" star was there to make sorting through a long list of routes easier. All bus stops were listed alphabetically and on a google map (see screenshot above). This made it easy to "favorite" your daily bus stops. For example I could favorite the 64 southbound stop at Diridon station. By instantly pulling up that station I could see when the next bus is expected at its timeline along the remainder of the route. I could also show the route on the map with a pin point of each bus stop along the way.

The author has included both the major time points as well as estimations of arrival times on all bus stops. You also have the ability to see only the time points or all bus stops with time estimations.

However....

Initially many users were never able to open the program due to crashes. Soon after posting the new version the author posted a new fix. I downloaded the new version and starting using it; going through all the new features. But my excitement wouldn't last long. Yesterday morning it would crash a few times but by evening it would crash once the app was opened and I haven't been able to get it to work since. Its sad because this had the look and feel of really being a useful app, one that is sorely needed in this valley. So until this major flaw gets fixed I guess I just wait for a new VTA app to come along. Whenever that is.

SJ Transit Lite on iTunes