Apple Maps Now Provides Transit Directions in New Orleans Ahead of Mardi Gras

[MacRumors]

Apple Maps has been updated with comprehensive transit data for the New Orleans, Louisiana metropolitan area, enabling iPhone users in the city and select suburbs to navigate using public transportation, including RTA buses and streetcars. Jefferson Transit buses and Amtrak routing is also available in the area.

Apple introduced Transit in Maps as part of iOS 9 in select cities around the world, including Baltimore, Berlin, Boston, Chicago, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Sydney, Toronto, and over 300 cities in China. The feature has its own tab in Apple Maps on iOS 10 for entering directions.

Transit continues to expand to several other cities, including Atlanta, Columbus, Dallas, Denver, Honolulu, Houston, Kansas City, Melbourne, Miami, Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Montréal, Pittsburgh, Portland, Prague, Rio de Janeiro, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, San Diego, Seattle, Vancouver, and Victoria.

In December, Apple expanded transit directions throughout Great Britain, beyond the London area already supported. The feature now works almost anywhere in England, Scotland, and Wales, such as Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Sheffield, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Bristol, Portsmouth, Nottingham, and Cardiff.

Mardi Gras is February 28, with parades taking place in New Orleans and Southern Louisiana throughout the month.

(Thanks, Bernd!)

Article Link: Apple Maps Now Provides Transit Directions in New Orleans Ahead of Mardi Gras

 

[Fzang]

So we've had enough snide about the infinitely slow rollout of the public transport feature.

When do we get offline maps?

I mean, I appreciate that it shows the temperature right on the map, for whatever reason. But really.

 

[dan110]

Apple is so far behind Google that I really don't see them in the same weight class.

 

[truthertech]

Apple is so far behind Google that I really don't see them in the same weight class.

You must not have used Apple Maps lately. I travel extensively and often use both at the same time just to see how far Apple Maps has progressed since its debacle of a roll out. Glad to say that in most important aspects they are now equivalent. I'd give AM a slight edge in terms of usability, interface, etc.,.

AM transit directions, while not in as many locations as GM are recognized as superior. AM could simply "turn on" transit for most everywhere if they wanted to follow GM and simply link to the various transit system directions. Apple Maps, however, wants to avoid the criticism that GM got with lots of problems with its transit info. Thus, Apple has been rolling out regions more slowly because they are customizing and verifying each region. (MacRumors should really make it clear that each of these "cities" are large regions with over a thousand cities now covered and hundreds of millions population.) For a really good explanation of why Apple Maps transit approach is far superior to Google's read this article

http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/07/07/why-apples-transit-maps-are-rolling-out-so-slowly



I'd also give GM points for lane assist and off line directions, and Google Maps has the edge in recognizing voice requests as it still knows more locations and recognizes them more easily than AM. These advantages may fade this year as it's expected that Apple will finish its base map this year which it has been working on for 5 years and will enable some exciting features.

When you add in the fact that Google is linking your driving to your master Google identifier in the file Google is assembling on you (email, photos, searches, music, postings, documents, Google now, and where you drive, etc.), it makes AM the clear winner for anyone who wants to protect their info (remember that law enforcement, governments, hackers, etc., all can access the info in your Google master file and having a record of everywhere you drive, bike, walk, take transit to, is something most people want kept private). That's why even though Google Maps is free and only takes about 30 seconds to download and is much better known, Apple Maps is now used billions of times a week and iPhone users use it exponentially more than Google Maps. Still not perfect, but has made amazing progress in a short time.

 

[ignatius345]

Now if only they'd make it so that every time I come back to Maps, it'd defaulted to driving directions again -- I want to set it to Transit and leave it there.

 

[eagleglen]

I never would have believed the rollout of transit info would take this long and be this slow. How long ago was it first introduced? Still waiting in Phoenix.

 

[Creek0512]

Now if only they'd make it so that every time I come back to Maps, it'd defaulted to driving directions again -- I want to set it to Transit and leave it there.

 

[ignatius345]

View attachment 687289

Yeah, I do have that preference set for Transit, but it's broken. It always defaults to car directions every time I open Maps. I'm in NYC and there are tons of transit options so that's definitely not the issue. I've reported the bug to Apple numerous times.