Montreal-based Transit launched a real-time trip-sharing feature on September 1 that lets you follow your kid’s bus ride on a live map instead of sending another “where are you?” text.
Transit said in an email to iPhone in Canada on Tuesday that 26.98% of its Canadian users start their commute between 7:00 and 8:00 a.m., and 39.39% of those users are students, so back-to-school is stacking new riders onto a crush that already has parents watching the clock. Share Trip sits on the same GO mode we covered when Transit rolled out crowdsourced tracking.
It is the latest add-on after London Transit riders got free Transit Royale in August and TTC customers were handed Royale in June, so the app is trying to be more than a departure board this fall.
Start a GO trip, tap Share Trip, and Transit builds a unique link you can send to friends or family, then the people on the other end see the route, the rider’s location, and the ETA live, and they do not need an app login because the page opens in a browser if Transit is not installed. If the rider misses a bus or takes a different path to the same destination, the map and arrival time update for whoever is following along, which is the whole point when a teen is hopping transfers and a parent is trying not to hover from the kitchen.
Sharing is 100% voluntary and only happens with the rider’s consent, and it shuts off automatically when they reach the destination or end the GO trip. Transit covers real-time info in more than 1,000 cities across 40 countries and is free on iOS and Android, with the Share Trip page laying out the rest of the walkthrough.
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