iPhone App Of The Week : MetrO

Web: www.stevenfrischling.com — E-Mail: fish@flyingwithfish.com

1/10/2009 – iPhone App Of The Week : MetrO

Traveling to new cities is fun but it can also be stressful when seeking to use public transit to navigate the new cities you find yourself in.  If you’re like me you prefer to use a train or a bus rather than a taxi…but what to do when you arrive in a country where you not only don’t speak the language, but you also can’t read the alphabet?

The answer to many travellers public transit needs can be found in a simple free iPhone App, MetrO.

What makes MetrO great for travellers is the App allows access to the public transit systems of hundreds of global cities. The available cities are not only major metro areas, but also minor metro areas, making this App very adaptable to all types of travel.  Before you head to a city you simply download the cities you want, then you can use the iPhone App without any network connections, thus not racking up any international roaming fees!

I have used MetrO in cities I am familiar with as well as cities I am not familiar with and been amazed at the accuracy of the information it has provided me.  Some cities are updated constantly to incorporate daily service disruptions, while others are simply just updated on a ‘regular basis.’ Of the places I have used MetrO (New York, Paris, San Francisco, Amsterdam, Tokyo) I have found the App to be extremely accurate, easy to use, easy to follow and a breeze to use, even in unfamiliar locations.

You can search travel options on MetrO by train, subway, bus, tram, etc (of course if the city has no tram or subway you can’t search by subway or tram) which allows for easy user customization. To allow for multiple travel options, depending on your knowledge of a city, you can also set the preferences to allow for train and bus stops between 300-meters and 1500-meters from your destination.  In San Francisco and New York I tested MetrO at different distances between 300m & 1500m, in Tokyo I only searched for train stations between 300m & 600m from my intended destination.

For the price of FREE can you afford to not have MetrO in you iPhone while traveling?

Below are eight screen shots of MetrO by Kinevia from my iPhone

Happy Flying!