About the service

• 1. What is Roadify Transit? Why should people use it?

  Roadify is a free mobile app that answers transit riders’ three most pressing questions -- When will it be here? Why is it late? How do I get there? -- using official, real-time data and service advisories, and schedules from transit agencies along with tweets and comments from other riders. Riders get the information they need in just a few taps on their smartphones.

  Roadify’s award-winning iPhone app has been providing riders with transit information since 2010, and now, even more smartphone users can use Roadify to enhance their transit experience.

• 2. What’s different about Roadify for Android?

  We completely rethought the user experience and underlying data architecture when designing Roadify for Android. It’s really all about having the richest data and the simplest design for getting quick answers to riders’ most basic and frequent questions. Roadify for Android is available in more than 60 cities so users can take it anywhere and find out what’s going on in just one tap when they’re home and when they travel.

• 3. In which cities can I use Roadify? What transit options are available?

  Roadify includes nearly every public transit option and some private services in more than 60 cities across the United States and Canada. For a complete list of cities and transit agencies,click here.

• 4. My city/favorite transit method isn’t listed. Can you add it?

  We’re always looking to enhance our offerings. Email support@roadify.com with your suggestions, and we’ll do our best.

• 5. Doesn’t Google Maps have that same information?

  Roadify, along with Google, Apple, and other independent services, relies on some of the same data. But Roadify also includes real-time service advisories and comments from other riders, including tweets. A key difference is the user experience. Roadify’s unique design is focused on getting riders the information they need regularly, as quickly and easily as possible, at the exact moment they need it. The result is that Roadify enjoys utilization rates that are significantly higher than the average app in its category.

• 6. How does Roadify get its data? Is the information I’m seeing based on real-time info or schedules?

  Roadify uses open data from transit agencies, including real-time vehicle location information, schedules, live service advisories, and tweets and comments from riders. We clean up this data so it can be easily found in our app. We’re managing data from close to 200 different sources. It’s a very complex task under the hood!

  We offer real-time tracking where available. The data comes from a variety of third-party sources and technologies that agencies contract for independently. Roadify consumes this data and organizes it on our platform. We don’t do the vehicle tracking itself.

• 7. Can I make suggestions on how to improve the app?

  Please do—we welcome comments and questions and we are highly responsive, with many user ideas being incorporated directly into our app. Write to support@roadify.com. If you like our app, please rate us on the Google Play Store or iTunes.

About the company

• 1. How does Roadify make money?

  Our business model is for the Roadify app to become the “go-to” source for multi-mode transit information and bookings. We will make money from affiliate lead-generation for on-demand transportation and commissions from bookings and ticket sales. Our TransitBoard service organizes information for display on public signage at retail, entertainment, sports and other venues such as Brooklyn’s Barclays Center. We charge businesses a subscription fee for this service.

• 2. How many users do you have?

  We don’t release detailed metrics publicly, but hundreds of thousands of transit riders have downloaded the Roadify for iPhone app and our utilization rates are significantly higher than the average for our category of mobile app.

• 3. Who built this version?

  Roadify’s Seattle-based development team, directed by Roadify’s CTO Ethan Arutunian, produced the app with input from Scott Kolber, the company’s CEO, based in New York. Damon Menne provided valuable user-experience design guidance. The app itself was engineered and coded by Devin Canterberry. In a sense though, Roadify’s users, through their frequent comments and measured usage, significantly informed many of our design and data decisions.

• 4. Are you going to update the iPhone app so it matches your Android version?

  Yes. We plan to see how Roadify for Android is used and what kinds of ideas our users have. Then we’ll incorporate that input into future upgrades of both versions of the app.

• 5. What else do you plan for the next few updates?

  We want to work on an even better user experience for directions, faster performance on the back-end, more data, more multi-mode services including booking, reservations and mobile payment capabilities. That should keep us busy for a while.