DC Metro and Bus

Love the app really useful and always works. Best feature is the metro map. However, there should be a way to instantly report things/alert metro police. For instance right now on the metro there is a homeless, crazy, or drunk person stumbling throughout the cart and has not gotten off. It would be nice to have an instant messenger to alert your organization when disorderly conduct that is not criminal is occurring so you will be able to remove this person from bother the paying customers. Or when for the 100th time in the hour the kids take over some of the cars, blast music and dance.

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This app is fantastic, until suddenly there’s no data. This has happened multiple times when tracking the T2 bus from my home in Bethesda southbound to Friendship Heights, and northbound from Friendship Heights towards my home in Bethesda. “WMATA reporting no data” appears on the screen. So frustrating. Makes an otherwise fantastic app completely useless. Several times in Friendship Heights, my bus is tracked by the app, and I time my arrival at the stop for 10 minutes before the bus is predicted to arrive. A few minutes after my arrival, that bus disappears from the app and the next bus (which is to arrive 30 or so minutes later) is the only one showing up on the app! What happened? Did my bus show up early? No, about 8 minutes later, my bus shows up at the stop (not on the app), and the driver is oblivious to the problem. (There is also the additional problem that buses show up at the stop with Not In Service on their displays, and you have to ask the driver to identify their bus— super annoying). I want to do right by the environment by using public transportation, but WMATA and this app have not ironed out the kinks.

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Because the feedback mechanism does not work in the app.... App interface is really messy and it makes it hard to use. The workflow is also not accommodating to the regular scenario for the new and current user. Consider that the Apple Maps app opens to a map. It tells you where you are and helps you get to where you want to go. The interface is simple, clean, effective. It uses progressive disclosure to bury the “additional information”. Isn’t Metro an app that users use to find out how to get to their destination in the same manner, simply focused on the use of metro services? Suggest that this app should simply open to a map with the flags showing where I am and where the bus stops are. Everything else should be a drill down. The search at the top of the map display should be the drill down for locations giving priority to metro routes . Like the maps app, an expansion below could show other options. Maps shows a fast nav menu for restaurants, etc. metro could do something similar and show stops, initially organized by distance from user. And if Advertizing is necessary, please consider the use of Apples iAd interface instead of the Pandora approach to butchering the user experience.

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The real-time predictions for arrivals of metro buses on the J1,2,3 line used to be spot on. In the past 4 months they become so unreliable that I can no longer use them to know whether I will miss or catch the bus. The ID of 1,2 or 3 is random although fortunately any of them will take me to the Medical Center Metro. But coming home, it is outrageous and a number of times I wished I had known the times were so off I should have taken an Uber or called someone to pick me up. Metro train schedules were ok but you don’t need the app once you are in the station. I keep hoping the old reliability will return but was disappointed yet again today. What happened and when will your real-time get real again?

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Fix the bug where the bus disappears off the map! It is so infuriating when you’re trying to time your morning commute, weighing out whether you’re going to sacrifice food, makeup, feeding your pet, or all the above just to be at the stop on time—only to either rush there and wait another 6 minutes when it says arriving in 2, or abandon all hope because the bus has completely disappeared from the queue. Don’t worry though, half the time you can feel like an idiot because it’ll magically REAPPEAR 1 minute before arrival. Every move you make based off this app is a gamble. Just fix it there’s no reason for this. And the UI could be a lot more pleasing to the eye.