[App Fridays] Hop on, hop off buses and trains; plan city travel with Ridlr the transport tracker

Though public transport is cheaper and helps decrease traffic on roads, many people prefer cabs or their own vehicles because of the ever changing schedules and unorganised nature of public transport. Birds Eye Systems has developed an app titled 'Ridlr' to address this issue and make public transport more convenient to use.

What is it?

Ridlr helps users plan their bus, local train, metro and monorail travel with a public transport tracker app. The app provides real time information, including delays, about bus, local train, metro and monorail schedules, to help users reach their locations on time and make better use of public transport. The app also provides time-tables and information on when to expect the next local train, bus or metro, and how long each will take to get people to their desired stop.

Features

User can tap 'Hop On' in the app when they board a bus or train to share its real-time location with everyone on the Ridlr network and also alert their family and friends of their location.

Through Ridlr, users can:

-View real arrival times for buses, trains, metro and monorails and can use the database of time-tables to plan city travel ahead of time.

-Customise their journey using multiple modes of public transport and figure out the fastest and most convenient connections and routes to their destination.

-Download schedules to check arrival/departure timings when they don’t have an internet connection.

-Save regular routes to Favourites for easy access.

-Users can share their location and planned route with friends using social networks and WhatsApp.

The app is free to download and covers three cities right now: Mumbai, Pune and Bangalore. In Mumbai, it covers BEST, NMMT and TMT bus timings, metro, monorail and local train schedules from VT to Karjat and Churchgate to Virar. In Pune, it covers PMPML bus timings and local train schedules. Ridlr soon plans to expand its reach and cover Delhi NCR, Chennai and Hyderabad too.

Related read: Qualcomm Ventures funds Birds Eye Systems, a real time traffic alert startup

Team behind it

Back in 2008 Brijraj Vaghani and Ravi Khemani were working in the IT industry in the US when they realized that people there were used to accessing traffic information before hitting the road. They saw an opportunity to tackle traffic problems the same way in India. Backed by the knowledge gained from their Masters in Engineering from the University of Missouri, they decided to work on creating an intelligent transportation system and started with Birds Eye Systems in 2009.

Their first product was traffline, a portal that allowed users to get real time traffic updates in their cities. After achieving success with this and developing many other apps, they recently came out with Ridlr, to make public transport more convenient.

Brijraj had worked with Qualcomm and Nextwave for five years before co-founding Birds Eye Systems. As a key industry spokesperson, he has worked with the traffic police to state the condition of traffic in metros. As CTO and co-founder, Ravi helps guide design and functionality at the company.

Related read: When it comes to helping commuters avoid traffic snarls, Traffline is one up on Google

Other key members of the company include Simon Jacob, head of product; Ameya Kolambekar, head of marketing; Shailesh Satarkar, head of UI/UX designing; Payal Sheth, head of operations; Vikas Jain, head of finance/HR and Nagaraj S Bolakatti, head of business development.

What we liked!

The app has a nice UI and UX. The 'Find fastest trip' and 'Hop on' features make travel interesting and easier for users who are new to a city. The multiple filters included such as 'Least arrival time', 'Fewest transfers' and 'Minimize walking' are useful.

Another useful feature is being able to download schedules of various bus routes, train, metro timings and getting online access to them.

What could be improved?

I tried out the app for a few days, during my daily commutes, but found that sometimes the 'Find fastest trip' feature did not provide accurate results. For example, for a regular route that I take, the app recommended that I get off at an earlier metro stop and walk 2.9 km instead of getting off at the next metro stop and walking 0.8 km. I chose the mode of transport as only metro.

Final verdict

The app on the whole is useful and user friendly. As it is trying to tackle an issue that is huge with many variables, a few minor glitches are understandable.

Website : Birds Eye Systems , Ridlr