Transit - Subway & Bus Times

Review by eFreeware

Transit is a public transportation app from Transit, Inc., a free download in the Maps & Navigation category with more than 10 million installs and a 4.6 average across roughly 401,000 ratings. It has been on Google Play since July 2013 and was last updated in October 2026, which tells you the developer keeps working on it rather than leaving it to gather dust.

The pitch is straightforward: instead of standing at a stop guessing when your bus or train will show up, you open the app and see live departure times and vehicles moving on a map. The developer leans on a mix of agency data, rider reports and its own arrival prediction to make those times as accurate as it can, and that combination is the main reason to consider it.

Coverage is the other draw. The app lists more than 1,000 cities and a comparable number of transit agencies, from New York's MTA and New Jersey Transit to BART, SEPTA, CTA, MARTA and systems well beyond the United States, including London, Paris, Barcelona and Dublin. If you ride a bus, subway, train, streetcar or ferry in a decent-sized city, there is a reasonable chance it is in there.

Live times, moving vehicles and the prediction engine

The core of the app is live information. Departures update as vehicles move, and you can watch them progress on a map rather than trusting a static timetable. That matters most on routes where a bus can be five minutes early or fifteen minutes late, and it is the feature the developer leads with.

Predictions do not rely on agency feeds alone. Transit, Inc. combines official data with reports from other riders and an in-house prediction engine, and the result is billed as the most accurate real-time information available across buses, subways, trains, streetcars, ferries and rideshare. I would treat that superlative as marketing, but the underlying idea is sound: more sources usually means fewer blind spots when one feed goes quiet.

The app also covers two-wheeled options. Bikeshare and scooter locations appear on the same map as transit vehicles, so you can see whether a shared bike is docked near your stop before you commit to walking. For anyone who mixes a bike with a train or a scooter with a subway, having both layers in one place saves switching between apps.

Trip planning that mixes buses, bikes and trains

The journey planner builds routes from A to B across public transportation and shows the fastest options first. Where it goes further than a basic direction finder is in combining modes: a trip can pair a bus with a bike, or a scooter with a metro ride, and the planner weighs those combinations against each other rather than treating each network separately.

You can shape the results in the settings. If you would rather not walk long distances, or you want to avoid particular modes, the planner can be told to skip them. That kind of personalization is what turns a generic route suggestion into something you would actually follow, and it is the part I would expect frequent riders to adjust first.

Saved destinations and lines are the shortcut layer. Once you have stored the places and routes you use often, planning a trip becomes a one-tap affair rather than a fresh search every morning. Alerts for delays and disruptions sit on top of this, so when something goes wrong on a line you rely on, you hear about it without having to dig through a feed yourself.

GO navigation, rider reports and paying fares

GO is the hands-on mode. It uses your location to fire departure alarms so you do not miss a bus or train, and it nudges you when it is time to get off or make a transfer. It is the feature to reach for when you are traveling an unfamiliar route and would rather not count stops in your head.

Using GO has a second effect: it feeds your movement data back into the system, which the developer says improves arrival estimates for everyone else and earns you points for being a helpful rider on your line. That is a neat way to make contributing feel worthwhile, though it does mean the app is asking something of you in return for its predictions.

Beyond the routing side, there is a social layer. You can see what other riders report about crowding levels, on-time performance and which station exits are quickest, which is the sort of detail no schedule contains. Fares and bikeshare passes can also be paid for inside the app in more than 100 cities, so a single install can cover both the planning and the paying on some systems.

What the app asks of you: data, GPS and purchases

The download is free, the app carries no ads, and it offers in-app purchases. The free experience is the main one, and anything extra is optional.

The bigger ask is location. GO navigation depends on GPS, and the developer notes that continued background use of GPS can reduce battery life. If you leave navigation running through a long journey, expect your phone to work harder than it would sitting idle. Riders who only glance at departure times will barely notice; those who lean on GO for a full trip should plan around it.

There is also a coverage caveat built into the model. The app supports over 1,000 cities and agencies, which is a lot, but it is not every system everywhere. Before you commit, it is worth checking that your city and your specific operator appear in the supported list, especially if you rely on a smaller regional agency.

Getting the most from it day to day

The offline support is the feature I would set up before I needed it. Bus schedules, stop locations, subway maps and even the trip planner remain available without a connection, which is exactly what you want when you are underground and the signal drops.

Saving your regular lines and destinations early changes how the app feels. Instead of searching for the same route every morning, you tap once and see the next departures. Pair that with alerts on the lines you depend on, and the app becomes a check-in rather than a research task.

It also pays to treat the rider reports as a second opinion rather than gospel. Crowding levels and on-time notes come from other passengers, so they reflect what those riders experienced, not an official measurement. Used alongside live vehicle positions, though, they fill in the parts of a journey a timetable cannot tell you about.

If you are new to a city, the combination of route planning, exit tips and GO alarms covers most of what a first visit demands. If you are a daily commuter, the value shifts to saved trips, disruption alerts and knowing whether to leave the house now or in ten minutes.

Transit suits riders who want one app for the whole journey

Transit is at its best for people who use public transportation often enough that small timing differences matter. If you catch a bus or train several times a week, live departures, disruption alerts and saved routes do real work. The 4.6 average across a large number of ratings suggests that pattern holds for a lot of riders.

It is also a good fit for anyone whose journey crosses networks. The ability to compare a bike plus rail against a bus plus subway, and to see bikeshare and scooter locations on the same map, is where a general-purpose maps app tends to feel thin. Add fare payment in over 100 cities and the app can cover a trip end to end.

The trade-offs are modest but real. GO navigation draws on GPS and can affect battery life, the free download carries in-app purchases, and coverage, while broad, is not universal. None of that undermines the core offer, but they are the things I would weigh before making it my default way to get around.

For a regular rider in a supported city, this is an easy install: it is free, it is ad-free, and it addresses the two questions that matter most, when is my ride coming and what is the quickest way there. For someone who only takes transit occasionally in a city already well covered by a general maps app, the benefit is smaller, though the offline schedules and rider reports still have their uses.

What's new in version 6.3.5

The best cyclists in the world took our hometown by storm as they duked it out at the Road World Championships in Montreal this week. Dodging our city’s infamous potholes, traffic pylons, and cowbell-clad maniacs on electric BIXIs, the winners sped to the finish — and hey, so does this new and faster version of Transit. Rate us 5 stars and we’ll put some poutine gravy in your bidons.