[HN Gopher] Citymapper Joins Via
___________________________________________________________________
Citymapper Joins Via
Author : gsa
Score : 106 points
Date : 2023-03-16 14:12 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (content.citymapper.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (content.citymapper.com)
| holyhanddogs wrote:
| Fairly unrelated I guess but I'd love to work on navigation
| software of some sort. I worked on a project involving it in
| project and had quite a lot of fun with it, something very
| gratifying about making something useful for day to day.
|
| I did apply to citymapper at some point to no avail
| unfortunately.
| cmonagle wrote:
| I hope this is appropriate, but I work at Transit and we do
| have some openings right now:
|
| https://transitapp.com/jobs
| marius-s wrote:
| Does feel borderline appropriate. But kudos for trying.
|
| Citymapper is definitely hiring now.
| https://citymapper.com/jobs Or feel free to contact me
| directly on marius@citymapper.com
| clairity wrote:
| i wish you were hiring a product manager, as i'd love to help
| you fix the horrid UX on the departure details screen i just
| posted about. it's been there for years, and i can't imagine
| that anyone who actually uses the app would have let it go
| that long without fixing it.
| hnarn wrote:
| I've always loved Citymapper, it made using public transport when
| living in a new city a breeze. It's really sad they don't support
| my current city, I'd be willing to put in free work to make it
| happen but I've never seen any way of helping out.
| folkrav wrote:
| Just chiming in with another option. May have been cause they
| are Montreal based, but back when I still lived there and
| regularly used public transport, Transit[1] was my favorite.
|
| [1] https://transitapp.com/
| valarauko wrote:
| Transit's UI is superior to any other comparable app, but I
| find CityMapper's routes superior (at least in NYC).
|
| I've also had issues with Transit surfacing incorrect bus
| routes based on cancelled buses (but scheduled) which
| CityMapper somehow could account for. Transit knows the next
| scheduled bus two minutes away isn't "live" (icons are
| different) but still surfaces it as a primary suggestion,
| while Citymapper wouldn't.
| brewdad wrote:
| Citymapper lets me navigate NYC like a local even if I only
| visit a couple times a year. It gives transit options
| taking into account real-time location and time to navigate
| not just to the subway station but through it. It gives me
| the street corner I should enter and the the underground
| exit I should use at the end of my ride. I love it and hope
| it continues to be great.
| graypegg wrote:
| +1 for transit. (I'm also predictably from Montreal haha)
|
| The crowning feature of Transit is the GO trips that let you
| share you location while on a bus with others. For bus
| arrival accuracy there's nothing better. It's probably saved
| me a flight or two before, by just making sure I get the 747
| bus to the airport.
| The5thElephant wrote:
| I like Transit for their quick at a glance public transit
| arrival times in NYC, but generally prefer Citymapper's
| overall step-by-step directions and multi-modal transit
| options. That being said Citymapper did put a bunch of things
| behind a paywall in the last few years that have made it less
| useful outside of pure public-transit directions.
| valarauko wrote:
| I think Transit works great for status updates for buses or
| trains you're already familiar with. If I'm travelling an
| unfamiliar route, it's always Citymapper. Plus the fact
| that Citymapper suggests which part of the train to board
| for proximity to the nearest exit? Amazing.
| clairity wrote:
| i use transit in LA (where it's the default app for metro)
| and it has a huge glaring UX failure in that the departure
| times list at the bottom of the line details screen takes up
| at least a 1/3 of the screen, and when you want to see more
| of the map and try to push the list down, it closes the
| details screen. it's so frustrating, because i end up doing
| this 2-3 times per use, needlessly tapping back and forth.
| there's already a close button available so scroll to bottom
| to dismiss is wholly unnecessary. the departure times list
| wastes a ton of precious screen real estate as well - it
| could simply be a comma-delimited list on one line that could
| scroll sideways, and thus obviating the need for 1/3 of the
| screen for mostly whitespace.
|
| i do like that the departure times are (slightly) more
| accurate because of the crowd-sourcing. however, the
| underlying data from metro is a mess, so they end up looking
| bad anyway because trains and buses still show up (or don't)
| unexpectedly due to metro's unreliable data.
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| hadn't used this before. Checked out the map. Wondered wtf was
| going on with the way they colored the nyc subway. Realized they
| highlight lines whenever there's a service change in effect,
| under the assumption that would be the uncommon case, and never
| anticipated highlighting most of the city in painful bright
| orange.
| maleldil wrote:
| Citymapper is useful but has extremely high battery usage on both
| Android and iOS. I use Google Maps and TfL Go instead, but I'd
| happily use Citymapper more if they fix this.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| Does it drain iOS battery in bg?
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| Consumer-facing routing is a commodity these days. Apple and
| Google's bundled maps/routing products get better by the month
| and are sweeping all before them. The only exit strategies for
| Citymapper that I could ever see were "get acquired by
| Apple/Google" or "firesale", and although the latter might be a
| bit harsh, TechCrunch suggests investors weren't exactly laughing
| all the way to the bank.[1]
|
| If you can identify a niche and keep your costs down then you
| might have a chance. Apps targeted at enthusiast cyclists
| continue to do well, for example, although I have my doubts about
| expenditure vs revenue for some of them. (Disclaimer: I run a
| small-scale cycle routing app/site.)
|
| But "people who want to get around Western European and North
| American cities" is not a niche that Apple/Google were ever going
| to overlook.
|
| [1] "Citymapper investors are mostly not making their money back
| in the transaction and that it's effectively a washout":
| https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/16/via-acquires-trip-planning...
| eloisant wrote:
| This is too bad because Citymapper is a great app and Google
| Maps is still very far from providing the same quality as
| specialized apps for public transit routing.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| The one advantage these specialised apps can have is their
| hyper-specific transit suggestions, which are custom per city.
| For example, in London Citymapper will suggest to wait and
| board front/mid/back of the platform to align yourself better
| with exits at your destination.
|
| Apple and Google tend to be slower to add suggestions like this
| because they scale poorly to other cities. But it's only a
| matter of time before they add them.
| djtango wrote:
| When I was in Tokyo last week google maps had carriage
| suggestions
| muti wrote:
| Issues with Google (I'm not familiar with Apple maps) maps are
| the cost and inflexibility. It can't do routing for non
| standard vehicles taking into account height limits, same side
| routing, hazmat etc
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| > If you can identify a niche
| doctoboggan wrote:
| For people who use either of these apps, what advantages do they
| offer over google maps transit directions? I live in Chicago and
| only use google maps but I would love to use something else that
| is more accurate with bus timings.
| ScottEvtuch wrote:
| I also live in Chicago and use CityMapper almost exclusively
| now. It gives way more detailed estimates for multiple
| transfers between bus and train and generally comes up with
| more/better routes for weird destinations.
| doctoboggan wrote:
| Does CityMapper suffer from the same "ghost bus" phenomenon
| that google maps does?
| valarauko wrote:
| What's the 'ghost bus' phenomena? I'm in NYC and don't use
| Google Maps.
| doctoboggan wrote:
| In Chicago google maps will show live bus info with the
| busses location on the map. However some of these are
| "ghost" busses and they don't really exist.
|
| I think it's a uniquely Chicago problem.
|
| Here is an article on it:
| https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/cta-makes-more-
| changes...
| et-al wrote:
| Ghost busses are most likely an issue with the GTFS real-
| time data from the agency, which the app just displays.
|
| I've personally also experienced the same issue with SF's
| Muni.
| valarauko wrote:
| Huh. In NYC I've had issues with routes designed around
| scheduled buses that were subsequently cancelled, but I
| feel I've only had that happen on Transit and not
| CityMapper. Live bus location on the map for a bus that
| isn't running is definitely news to me though.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| I use Citymapper all the time for the NYC subway, and I
| recommend it to everyone I meet.
|
| 1. Most accurate arrival times (this matters _a lot_ for
| transfers)
|
| 2. If your trip has transfers, it takes into account how long
| it takes to walk between platforms (some apps assume its
| instant, but if it's a large station it can take the better
| part of 10 minutes to get to another train)
|
| 3. Tells you which part of the train (forward, middle, back) to
| sit in so you're closest to the exit when you get off
|
| 4. Service changes are accurate and automatically included in
| the routing
|
| 5. Powerful routing options -- if it's raining, you can
| prioritize routes with less walking, or if you have a Citibike
| membership you can create routes that combine biking + transit,
| etc.
|
| It's honestly good enough that I pay $20/year for it. Every
| once in a while I give Apple Maps or Transit a shot, but
| they're just not on the same level.
| valarauko wrote:
| > 4. Service changes are accurate and automatically included
| in the routing
|
| I'm not sure if this is the case with Citymapper. Transit
| does offer alternatives, but I don't think I've ever
| encountered this with Citymapper, i.e., you're committed to a
| particular route once you start. With Transit, I often get a
| suggestion (while on the train) that I might not make it in
| time for my connection with X train, and the next Y train
| leaves in Z minutes. I feel with Citymapper I only get
| something like this if alternate trains were part of the
| initial route segment, eg, N/R/Q trains. I also feel
| Citymapper does a much worse job updating ETAs or arrival
| times for alternative trains than Transit.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| I agree, that's my biggest frustration with Citymapper. I
| wasn't aware Transit handled that better, I might have to
| give it another shot. But by "service changes," I was
| actually referring to trains being re-routed by the MTA --
| like when the F was running on the E line in Manhattan a
| few weekends ago.
| valarauko wrote:
| > I was actually referring to trains being re-routed by
| the MTA -- like when the F was running on the E line in
| Manhattan a few weekends ago.
|
| Ah. To be fair, I think all the apps do this now,
| including Google and Apple Maps.
|
| Regarding alternate routes with Citymapper, I kind of
| wish it offered me alternates that don't necessarily
| include the original end station. I find I often end
| trips at stations I'm supposed to switch trains at and
| find routes to different stations than my initial route
| that still save time.
| ezfe wrote:
| Via is not a general-purpose transit system. Via is an on-
| demand customizable van service that is often used by
| municipalities. It would be a ride type in Citymapper, not a
| competitor to Citymapper.
|
| Some cities, like the Park City area in Utah, integrate the
| busses and Via vans into a single app to optimize the use of
| both. Citymapper could do this in-app in the future, creating
| chained transit options.
| nicoburns wrote:
| For London at least, better routing, more accurate timings, and
| also accurate updates on things like strikes. It used to be
| significantly better but Google Maps released an update a few
| years ago that makes the gap relatively small though, but it is
| still better.
|
| It's also surprisingly useful to have two mapping apps on
| mobile devices which otherwise make it difficult to have two
| separate routes open at once.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| One advantage to me is that it's not Google. So I'm not adding
| to my profile at Google and I'm not helping them consolidate
| their advantage.
| gregoriol wrote:
| In Paris, France, Citymapper is very accurate about subway
| timings, walk timings, which exit to use, ... it's the most
| precise and efficient transit app available here from my
| experience.
| dzonga wrote:
| when I lived in NY / Philly, Citymapper was way ahead of Google
| maps in terms of transit info. since moving to live in europe,
| I haven't had much use for Citymapper.
| jjazwiecki wrote:
| Citymapper incorporates transit delays/outages. When I switched
| from using Google Maps several years ago, they didn't, and I
| haven't had much of a reason to switch back. Big difference
| between "based on average times, this is the fastest route" and
| "based on the latest information, this is the fastest route".
| valarauko wrote:
| I think all the big apps use live transit info now. That
| said, Citymapper actively surfaces that it's rerouting
| because of cancellations on XYZ train, which is very helpful
| information. I don't see Google or Apple Maps suggesting
| routes with cancelled trains either, but without that
| information front and center it can be confusing if it's not
| a regular route.
| flak48 wrote:
| In London, Citymapper shows the cost of each trip which can be
| very useful as there are often many routes that might take a
| similar amount of time but cost different (eg. sometimes you
| can take skip zone 1 for a few extra minutes or understand why
| you're paying extra when taking a train instead of tube in
| South London). It also recommends the best exit to take quite
| accurately for train/tube stations.
|
| Citymapper is also much quicker to incorporate changed
| schedules and excludes delayed / cancelled trains from results
| within minutes of the changes being announced.
|
| For altered schedules, Google is not only slower to react but
| also just posts a generic link to the TfL website - and you
| then have to parse the TfL notice yourself to understand which
| stations / bus stops are closed etc. The routes suggested by
| Google also still include cancelled trains / buses - it's your
| job to double check by visiting the TfL / train operator's
| websites.
| joemi wrote:
| I use CityMapper solely for train and bus maps. I'm probably a
| minority, considering how increasingly hidden the maps button
| ends up getting with each release.
| urbandw311er wrote:
| I know a few people who worked at Citymapper in senior roles, and
| the general consensus has always been that there was ultimately
| no feasible way to monetise.
|
| As others have pointed out, their core value of
| routing/planning/exploiting Open Data became heavily commoditised
| by Apple, Google, and the transport operators themselves (e.g.
| TfL in London). Their belated attempts to monetise payments,
| data, even running transport itself, haven't been successful:
| it's a crowded, aggressive market filled with long-time
| incumbents who have established relationships and deep strategic
| control points.
|
| As a place to work / founder values... ..well, the reviews on
| Glassdoor speak for themselves. I can't say I'm grieving for its
| loss.
| gibolt wrote:
| Absolutely love Citymapper for finding pleasant bike routes!
| Really hope this doesn't end up handicapping the product or
| spreading focus thin.
|
| Have recommended it to so many people. Biking wouldn't be the
| same without it.
| urbandw311er wrote:
| Don't worry there's a ton of other bike routing products out
| there.
| marius-s wrote:
| Thank you for the feedback and love. Cycling and walking are
| indeed core to the app experience and multimodal routing and
| will remain important.
| eiiot wrote:
| I've used Citymapper for maybe 5 years, and while I remain a fan,
| Transit[0] just seems like a much better product. They support
| more cities, their user tracking is (generally) more accurate,
| and (at least in my opinion) their app just better designed &
| thought out for transit use.
|
| [0]: https://transitapp.com/
| grishka wrote:
| More cities in which part of the world? Citymapper does support
| my city. Transit does not.
| nimbleplum40 wrote:
| Transit is also really, really good if you know where you're
| headed but just need to check train/bus arrival times. The app
| opens straight to live arrival times of all the lines nearest
| to you. So handy.
| antihero wrote:
| Giving this a go purely because the UI is beautiful and it
| seems to suggest using my bike in combination with public
| transport which is glorious.
| georgebcrawford wrote:
| I'm in the same boat, the UX/UI is _beautiful_
| jstx1 wrote:
| So Via have acquired Citymapper, or am I misreading this?
|
| They've dressed up the announcement so much that you can't even
| understand what they're announcing.
| gertrunde wrote:
| The news release from the Via side is a bit more informative.
|
| (More text, less pictures...)
|
| https://ridewithvia.com/news/via-acquires-citymapper-to-expa...
|
| (Edit: When I say informative... it's unfortunately still
| dripping in marketing-speak fluff).
| urbandw311er wrote:
| Well that's Citymapper for you, cocky and cutesy even as
| they're being dragged away to the abbatoir.
| colesantiago wrote:
| > The app will continue
|
| I _really_ doubt that after less than 5 years it will be rolled
| into Via.
|
| Is there any thriving UK startups still around acquiring US
| companies? It seems that the news I see is US company acquires UK
| startup when I don't see the other way round.
|
| Really makes the UK startup scene just a european HQ for US
| companies at a discount.
| dzonga wrote:
| compared to Israel, yeah UK tech scene seems to be
| underperforming. there's massive technical talent in the uk,
| favorable laws and common language with the us. I think what
| let's the uk down, is a lot of places lose focus, talent is
| lost to consulting shops, bureaucracy slows a lot of things
| down. a counter point is look at game studios - uk seems to be
| delivering there. it's just other products where uk is
| underperforming. uk i.e london should be ahead of places like
| austin in terms of # of startups
| _dain_ wrote:
| London is a really unattractive place when you consider
| salary vs housing affordability. Most of the high tech salary
| goes straight into the pocket of landlords. And you can
| forget buying.
|
| But London is where most of the innovative high-paying firms
| are. So tech workers are in a bind: move to London for a
| nominally high-paying tech job but get fucking hosed on rent
| and travel costs, or stay in the regions and work in a lower
| paid, less interesting firm. There isn't much real difference
| to your standard of living.
|
| It's not just the absolute level of rent either; it also goes
| up faster. People don't want that kind of liability, you need
| a raise just to stay in place, and raises aren't forthcoming
| lately.
|
| And it's not easy to get a London-tier salary while working
| remotely from rural Yorkshire or something. They've been
| tamping down hard on that kind of thing.
|
| The housing market is rigged for boomers and it's strangling
| Britain's growth. Forget freedom of movement with Europe; I'd
| like freedom of movement inside my own fucking country first.
|
| (And all of the above sounds similar to NYC and SF -- it is,
| but London's salary upside is nowhere near as high as those
| places. And Americans have several big metropoles to choose
| from, we only have the one.)
| notahacker wrote:
| At some point more startups have got to be tempted by
| Birmingham unless they really need to network with the
| City. Has the big city stuff except glamour, close enough
| to London when the sales or fundraising effort needs to be
| there, and even the entry level devs can afford their own
| flat.
| _dain_ wrote:
| it has a population over million and doesn't even have a
| metro. and it's ugly as fuck. I don't know how it works
| out for startup economics but I wouldn't move there.
|
| there's also our sad little "Silicon Fen" around
| Cambridge, again rubbish because of housing affordability
| and lack of good transport links. it's a national tragedy
| that there isn't a direct railway link between Oxford and
| Cambridge (thanks Dr Beeching).
| jack_riminton wrote:
| "except glamour" lol, understatement of the millennium
|
| I say this as someone that used to live and work in
| London (and spent a small time living in Birmingham as a
| child), Birmingham has a HUGE way to go to convince
| anyone like me to live there
|
| It may be big, but attractive it is not
| notahacker wrote:
| Glamour is relative though. It's even more of an
| understatement to say Brum is unlikely to be a tourist
| mecca, but startup salary London isn't Belgravia and the
| Queen and the West End, it's renting a room in a bog
| standard Victorian house shared with four strangers in
| Clapham and cramming onto the Tube for half an hour to
| get into a Wework whilst dreaming of an exit big enough
| to own 25% of your own home. You might actually _feel_
| more glamorous with your own place in a posh suburb with
| an overground or a shiny city centre flat even if that
| city is Birmingham, and the format of the Wework doesn 't
| change much. If you plonked Old Street roundabout onto
| the edge of Birmingham's inner ring road it'd fit in
| seamlessly, and for the many hipsters that love the er...
| _bohemian_ nature of Shoreditch 's grimy canals and rail
| underpasses, sketchy tower blocks and yuppie flats next
| to crumbling graffiti-covered Victorian buildings turned
| into bars to sell young trendy people expensive
| drinks.... just wait until they see how much of that lot
| Brum has!
| epicnoodles wrote:
| This is the biggest problem in the UK.
|
| I'm lucky to be working remotely as a Software Engineer
| from North Leeds for a London based prop-tech startup.
| Salary around PS70k, 1.5/2 years experience.
|
| I was living in London for about five to six years, but our
| rental came to an end. With the mania of last year, we were
| looking at PS2000-PS3000 per month for a very average,
| fairly cramped flat within zone 2 (or 40 mins to our
| offices). Despite my partner being a solicitor (PS50k, but
| could have been closer to PS100k now if we stayed), it felt
| like a really long road to be able to afford a home.
|
| As much as I love London, my friends and the opportunities,
| we were killing ourselves for vague dream of eventually
| owning a very average house, or a good leasehold flat in
| 5-10 years time. It was incredibly demotivating. But maybe
| our standards are high.
|
| We instead bought a huge five detached bedroom house. 15
| minutes on the bus to the city, 5 minutes drive and your in
| the countryside, another 20 and you're in the Yorkshire
| Dales. David Llyods 5 minute drive away. Empty state of the
| art, free to use, public tennis courts 10 minutes walk.
| Massive park (used to be Europes largest urban park) right
| outside our door. Lots of local pubs and eateries within
| walking distance and more variety throughout Yorkshire a
| short drive away. Our monthly mortgage repayments are
| PS1800 (PS950 interest, the rest on capital). Quality of
| life is a no brainer. We live like royalty up here.
|
| Even for start-ups the cost of office space is felt high in
| London. My company were looking at some really average
| 10-15 seater rooms, which were coming in at PS10k per
| month. I'm sure office space in smaller cities is much
| cheaper, plus you probably get better employee retention as
| they aren't squeezed so hard by living circumstances (or
| poached as a result of needing more money).
|
| It's just such a shame that 90%+ (guess) of innovative
| start ups are in the South East. It becomes self fulfilling
| as the labour market thickness is much greater there as you
| can rely on public transport (unlike the North), so more
| people go there, so more thickness, so easier to hire the
| team you need.
|
| 1) Create reliable public transport in other cities which
| is competitive to London. Get out of UK centrist mindset.
| 2) Change cultural perceptions about the rest of the
| country. Literally a few fictional TV shows or stories
| about young, techy people living a lifestyle where they all
| own their own houses, maybe turn an old industrial mill
| room into a little start-up HQ, go swimming in waterfalls
| in the Dales at the weekend and still have great nights out
| in Leeds is all that is needed to break the London
| fixation. To show people that there is in fact, life beyond
| London. 3) Create incentives to get some first movers to
| relocate. Like if a start up physically locates in a
| particular area (say Leeds city centre), the government
| will pay half the salaries for the first 20 employees for 3
| years. Maybe even throw in some free accommodation in a co-
| living space to help people settle when they relocate (a
| bit like a uni experience). Make it financially attractive
| to founders to scale their businesses in different places.
|
| I'm sure there's flaws in those arguments, but there are
| definitely things the UK can do to make it less depressing
| to start a business here! It just takes some will, and the
| government to have the balls to do something tangible
| outside of the Whitehall bubble.
| grumpymouse wrote:
| From an employee perspective I don't think it's really
| worth being outside London right now. I want to live
| somewhere where there are more than a handful of places
| that I could work locally (and I don't count companies
| bashing out websites in PHP etc). I'm not really
| interested in working for startups, but if I were I would
| definitely not move across the country for a single
| employer. It's just not worth the risk. It's sad, because
| I grew up elsewhere in the country and it would be great
| for those areas to have the same opportunities as London,
| but it is what it is.
| dzonga wrote:
| one thing in regards to that I see the UK as five
| countries: the fifth country being London.
|
| now regarding how london centric the uk is ? I think it's
| due to the rampant classism in the uk. the whole "eeww
| the poors / plebs".
|
| cz to me there's no reason for a bunch of startups to all
| be concentrated in london, oxford or cambridge.
|
| seems the government wants to encourage regional growth
| based on remote work. but yeah they will need to
| incentivize startups to hire people not just in london
| but throughout the uk.
|
| prop-tech, is that property tech ? with just 1 - 2 years
| experience that's a good salary.
| _dain_ wrote:
| _> But maybe our standards are high._
|
| No, our standards are too low. People just have this
| fatalist attitude, "oh yeah it's London, of course it's
| expensive". It's how they make you feel like it's you're
| just an uppity prole for wanting a better life. Fuck
| that. London was affordable within living memory, and it
| can be again. The problem is purely a lack of political
| will to allow enough good housing to be built.
|
| _> I'm sure there's flaws in those arguments, but there
| are definitely things the UK can do to make it less
| depressing to start a business here!_
|
| They're well intentioned, but they wouldn't fix the core
| problem because your proposals (aside from transport
| improvements) are all demand-side reforms, but the
| housing squeeze is almost purely supply-side. It's
| actually precisely this kind of tinkering that makes the
| problem worse -- all the lies they put out about "helping
| first-time buyers" with this or that tax cut or savings
| scheme -- it's all just musical chairs. It's still the
| same number of people competing for the same scarcity; it
| just a zero-sum adjustment of who wins and who loses. If
| you bring a bunch of tech workers to Leeds, Leeds will
| end up with a housing crisis, because the underlying
| legal/regulatory system is the same there as in London,
| and it encodes an inelastic supply curve into law. What
| those subsidies will actually do is transfer money (via
| taxation and debt issue) from productive areas of the
| economy into the bank accounts of incumbent rentiers,
| with renters and homebuyers as the delivery system.
| Prices will keep going up until the planning system is
| reformed to allow by-right construction, and that means
| depriving NIMBYs of their veto powers, which is untenable
| for the Tories. (And Labour will fuck it up in a
| different way, they're addicted to council housing)
| iamben wrote:
| I don't think the UK particularly encourages startups
| either. It's all very well saying you want to be a "science
| and technology superpower" but everything feels like
| buzzword bingo - quantum! AI! Corp tax is going up,
| entrepreneur's tax relief went from 10m to 1m...
|
| I'm just ranting. I don't know the answer, I don't know
| what they should be doing. But there's a ton of people
| doing cool things (or trying to!) and absolutely as you
| say, it's a whole lot harder to take any risks when London
| costs as much as it does and bills and expenses are doing
| what they're doing.
| nicoburns wrote:
| JustEat (which bought GrubHub and now seems to have merged with
| the Dutch takeaway.com) is the only example I can think of.
| eloisant wrote:
| Waze isn't from the UK, but it still exists 10 years after
| being acquired by Google.
| [deleted]
| jonatron wrote:
| I reported an issue with Citymapper not handling a loop bus route
| properly in 2018. Haven't used it since, they never fixed it.
| marius-s wrote:
| Hi,
|
| Marius here - VP Engineering for Citymapper (powered by Via)
|
| We are excited about the opportunities this creates for the
| product and team. We are looking forward to join an excellent
| tech company. Happy to answer any questions.
|
| And we are hiring as we are expanding our product and team. For
| openings to work on the Citymapper app and tech please visit
| https://citymapper.com/jobs or write to marius@citymapper.com
| rohith2506 wrote:
| congrats to you and your team Marius. Love your product. I did
| reach out to you a while ago with my resume and I didn't hear
| anything back yet
| maelito wrote:
| Hi, your app depends on Google. I can't use it on LineageOS
| without installing Google services. Isn't Google your top
| competitor ? Isn't it a problem, that to use your app you need
| to use an OS that comes with an uninstallable version of Google
| Maps ?
| nmy wrote:
| Thank you Marius and team. I'm a long time daily user, and I
| just love what you've built
| leftcenterright wrote:
| Congrats to the team!
|
| Could you give an idea about the tech stack powering
| citymapper?
| marius-s wrote:
| Thanks - and good question.
|
| We run a large deployment of services to support millions of
| daily active users across the 450+ cities that the Citymapper
| app operates in - all on AWS EKS. Most of the code of the
| backend services is written in Python and we have CPP and
| some Go services or modules as we deal with a lot of CPU and
| memory intensive workloads (eg routing) as well as high I/O
| workloads (we are using 1000s of different data sources)
|
| The apps and SDK are written in Kotlin / Swift / React
| fredley wrote:
| Congrats Marius, and everyone else at CM!
| pedro2 wrote:
| Can I expect a somewhat lesser focus on European cities in 1 to
| 2 years while VIA expands its capabilities on Northern America?
| marius-s wrote:
| There is actually a great coverage area overlap between VIA
| and Citymapper - esp. in North America and Europe. I wouldn't
| expect Europe not not be a focus given the huge transit
| market size.
| ezfe wrote:
| Via is a great service in the areas of Massachusetts that offer
| it, hopefully this allows both apps to be improved.
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