PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — After several years of development, SEPTA released a new version of its smartphone app Wednesday.
The app, for iPhone and Android devices, is designed to provide smoother trip planning, using real-time schedules.
Version 3.0 more prominently uses geolocation for trip planning and route suggestions. “You'll notice that when you open it up, it will show you all of the stations and stops around you,” said Lex Powers, SEPTA's director of service information design.
“We've already received feedback that this tool has been able to introduce people to new routes that are around them.”
The new app also won't annoy users by prompting them to download the latest schedule. “One of the things that people are going to notice the most is that you don't have to download schedules on a regular basis," Powers told KYW Newsradio.
“I think that that's a pain point that we've heard about for a while. The app just fetches data as it is available.”
The home screen will display SEPTA routes near a user's location, or they can choose to default to frequently used favorites. During a month of beta testing many users said they preferred to see their favorite routes first, according to Katie Monroe, SEPTA's project manager for service disruption communications.
“We heard from folks that they really wanted that home screen to default to favorites, if they had a favorite, so that was one change we made," said Monroe.
The app's trip planner function includes a zoomable map and alerts that may affect travel. “Once you plan a trip, we made the results screen for that trip a little more interactive, so you can zoom and tap on things,” she said.
The new app is also more compatible with screen readers, she said, making it more useful for blind and low-vision riders.
And there's no longer a need to bring up the separate Transit Watch app. Powers said communication with SEPTA police is now built into the SEPTA app.