Does my train run, and from which platform? My line, chosen once, on the home screen
Someone who commutes by train asks the same three questions every morning and every evening. Here is how the tile answers them before the person reaches the station.
Tomislav Krnic
Founder of the smart city project CityX · 3 min read
A woman takes the train to work in another city every morning and back every evening. Every day she asks the same things: does my train run, is it late, which platform. The departure board answers only once she is in the station, and looking it up anywhere else means typing in both stations every time.
Her line does not change. She should not have to say it twice.
My line, chosen once
The Trains service in the CityX app starts with an invitation on the home screen: Set your line. A tap opens the list of stations, starting with the ones nearby, and a search for any other. She picks where she leaves from in the morning, then where she is going. That is all she ever sets.
From then on the tile knows which way she is going by where the phone is: near the departure station it shows the trains out, near the destination the trains back. On a day she travels the other way, one tap swaps the direction for three hours.
The next train, at a glance
The tile then shows the next train on her line: when it leaves and in how many minutes, the platform, and a word for its state. In the shots below it is 16:30, in 4 min, platform 10, On time, and after it the trains at 16:59 and 17:21.
One tap opens the page with the next trains in order. Each says when it leaves and arrives, how long it takes, whether there is a change and how full it is expected to be. A tap on a train gives the arrival platform, where to change and how long there is to do it: here, 8 minutes.
When something goes wrong, the tile says it in colour and in words: a delay in amber with the minutes, a cancelled train in red, a changed platform in amber with the new number. Colour never stands alone.
Each time also says what kind it is: On time when the train is running on time, Scheduled when there is only the timetable to go by. The tile never pretends.
What it takes
A railway station in or near the city, and the city's wish to put its commuters' trains on their home screens. The city has nothing to build or maintain, and from the first day everyone who travels by train sees their own line, not a timetable for the whole country.
A commuter does not want a timetable. They want to know whether there is time to finish the coffee. The city that tells them is part of their morning, every morning.