Embark NYC wins best Transit App

9 Feb

The App Quest
The New York MTA hosted an App Quest contest to see what the tech community could build on top of recently opened transit data. This contest arose from the newly revealed experience that hackers and designers can create apps that are more attractive and accessible, for far cheaper and much quicker than transit agencies themselves can.

Embark NYC

iBART Custom Map
The winner of the the App Quest contest was Embark NYC. Embark is an app that routes you all over NYC and looks great. I’ve been using their iBart app for San Francisco for a couple years now. I’ve always admired their custom map of the BART system.

TravelShed
My work, Urban Mapping, also entered an app into the App Quest contest. We developed and submitted TravelShed, a visual way to see how far you can travel on transit in a given amount of time. I didn’t personally work on it at all, yet I think its a great iteration of the isochrone map.

NotifyME
A runner up of mention is NotifyME. Its an Android app that will send you updates if the trains you usually take are delayed. I’m mentioning this one because I just built the same sort of service as a text message app, here in SF. Check it out at Late BART.

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