Park City Transit is moving to a single mobile app for tracking city buses. The city is dropping the My Stop app and will now use the Transit app to improve real-time bus tracking and rider experience.
City Transportation Director Tim Sanderson says the decision to streamline comes after running two tracking apps over the past year.
“Transit is its own separate company, and they provide real-time information for a number of different cities, including Salt Lake City, and High Valley Transit,” Sanderson said. “We're not in the app business. We're in the moving people business, and it's much easier to have somebody on the outside do it. Also, for tourists who may use transit in their home market, they're already familiar with the app. They don't have to download something new.”
Sanderson says the city is preparing a tutorial to help riders transition to the new platform. The app allows users to save their favorite routes and provides multiple travel options between two points — not just the next arriving bus.
“If you're programming in a route, it will only give you the buses that will follow that route,” he said. “But for example, if you were going from Old Town Transit Center to the library, it will give you all of the options that will go to those two stops, not just necessarily the next bus.”
The city is also working on improving “interlining” — allowing buses to continue on a new route without requiring passengers to transfer at the transit center. Sanderson says that could save time and reduce layovers but acknowledges that mid-route switches can be confusing.
“We do have some challenges, and we're working through that,” he acknowledged. “One of the things this year, we're not doing any substantial changes, because, again, a lot of that stuff is very disruptive, especially for people who catch the same bus at the same time, we start changing some of those things, and it can adversely affect so we want to be very careful and very methodical when we do it. But we do have many challenges like that.”
As part of the broader technology upgrades, Sanderson says riders will eventually be able to see if a bus is changing routes before boarding.
The Transit app is free and available for both Apple and Android devices. Look for the green square icon with what appears to be a sideways “S.”
