Transit directions have come to Apple Maps, but have they come to you?
Update May 15, 2017: Transit directions are now available for Adelaide, Australia.
Apple has re-integrated transit directions into maps — after losing them a few years back when the company parted ways with Google — and that means you can now find trains, buses, ferries, and more, all on your iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Mac. But only in the following cities.
- Adelaide, Australia
- Atlanta, GA
- Austin, TX
- Baltimore, MD
- Berlin, Germany
- Boston, MA
- Chicago, IL
- China
- Cincinnati, OH
- Cleveland, OH
- Columbus, OH
- Dallas, TX
- Denver, CO
- Detroit, MI
- Great Britain
- Honolulu, HI
- Houston, TX
- Japan
- Kansas City, MO
- Los Angeles, CA
- Melbourne, Australia
- Mexico City, Mexico
- Miami, FL
- Minneapolis, MN
- Montréal, Canada
- New Orleans, LA
- New York City, NY
- Philadelphia, PA
- Pittsburgh, PA
- Portland, OR
- Prague, Czech Republic
- Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- Sacramento, CA
- Salt Lake City, UT
- San Antonio, TX
- San Diego, CA
- San Francisco, CA
- São Paulo, Brazil
- Seattle, WA
- Sydney, Australia
- Toronto, Canada
- Vancouver, Canada
- Victoria, Canada
- Washington, D.C.
- Windsor, Canada
Are Apple maps transit directions available where you live? If so, how do they work for you? If not, what are you using instead?
Reader comments
Apple Maps transit directions — Which cities have them?
Has Apple maps improved in the last 6 months? I haven't even launched it since then. I realize that it is dramatically improved from the embarrassing initial release, but as of six months ago it was still abysmal. I tried to go back to it, and give it a chance, but I abandoned the experiment after about a week. So many problems. I don't even remember them all. It couldn't identify restaurants that I was standing in front of when searching for places to eat (consistently, not just a one-time experience). On a few different occasions in that short test it decided to route me through places that I had already been while navigating. Either it is shockingly stupid or the most advanced traffic avoidance system ever created. Once it literally wanted me to go in a big square that took me back to my starting place before actually sending me on my way. This is difficult to explain, but the timing of the map and indicators (voice, tone, watch) are just "off" somehow. I had problems missing turns because the system had me thinking that I wanted the turn immediately before or immediately after the correct turn.
Sent from the iMore App
I've found that Apple Map's routing depending on traffic doesn't work as well as Google Maps, as Google Maps would direct me onto a side road avoiding the main road with busy traffic, whereas Apple Maps would just tell me to stay on the main road. I've not tested things like restaurants, though I did find Apple Maps had better accuracy with home addresses in the UK as opposed to Google Maps. I've not had a problem with the timing of the turn notifications.
Of course, Apple Maps will always suffer because of one thing, it's not had the time to mature. Google Maps has been around for a very, very long time, and even Apple used Google Maps before Apple Maps was created. I've started using Apple Maps more now, I find it more visually appealing and I like the Apple Watch integration, but if I need to get somewhere fast I will use Google Maps due to its better ways of avoiding traffic.
Given the time it's taken for Google Maps to become a very good maps application, I'm sure Apple Maps will reach the same quality eventually. I'm hoping for lane guidance as well, as this is a really useful feature on Google Maps, especially when you've got a roundabout with 4 different lanes
Rene, you need to update your article as it is misleading. It's misleading to use the term "cities," when these are actually regions with over a thousand cities, with hundreds of millions of people in these regions... As just one example, "San Francisco" includes transit directions 90 miles south to Monterey and Salinas, 65 miles north to Santa Rosa, 80 miles east to Stockton, and includes all of San Jose (technically a larger city than San Francisco) and Silicon Valley, as well as Oakland and the East Bay area! As another example, most all of Great Britain and Japan are now covered!
The other key thing to educate your readers about is the reason why Apple Maps is rolling out transit directions so slowly. Since most cities/transit regions have on line schedules people ask why Apple doesn't just link to them. Apple could do this, in effect "turn on " the entire system at once and show how their coverage is the same as Google Maps for transit. However, and this is the key point, Apple has wisely decided that they want a better user experience, so they are customizing each region. Google received a lot of complaints when it just linked to these schedules that are rife with errors, etc. Apple, because it had a debacle initially with Apple Maps, and because it wants to "think different" has taken a unique approach to each region as explained below. It would be good for iMore to maybe do an update Rene. Plus, insider info, get ready for some fantastic new features this year with the completion of Apple's five year project to create its own base map.
http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/07/07/why-apples-transit-maps-are-ro...
Apple are definitely doing it the right way. Apple Maps now has transit directions in the UK, and it lists bus times along with the bus company. The bus company is incredibly important as bus passes are unique to the bus company, yet Google Maps has no information on this. This makes Google Maps' bus transit information completely useless because I have no idea what buses I can actually get on with my bus pass.
The main issue with the public transport options on Apple Maps is that it doesn't give you the options to walk to an alternative form of transport. If I plan a journey via Apple Maps it invariably tells me where the nearest bus stop is and sends me on my way via a bus to either where I want to go or a train station etc. Google offers this option, but also gives me the choice to have a stroll to a train station that might be further away than the bus but invariably faster (especially if the bus route doesn't go there)
It's definitely improved since launch though; my house is now correctly shown to be next to a large park rather than the lake that it was convinced was outside my kitchen window at launch.
Are you sure? I just tested it, and it gives me several options, most of them bus routes but one was a train