MelBet Bangladesh Mobile App for Android & iOS 2025

The Best Free Public Transit Apps To Get You From A To B Anywhere In The World

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday.

You might think you don't need a separate app for public transit directions, considering you get the feature built into Google Maps and Apple Maps—two very capable apps that are available for free, and which come preinstalled on Android handsets (Google Maps) and iPhones (Apple Maps, with Google Maps also available).

However, sometimes a dedicated app works best: It's more detailed, it's more thorough, and it's more focused. That's the case with the apps we've listed below, which are often more useful than the public transit features in Google Maps and Apple Maps.

If you spend a lot of time on public transit, or you're about to—maybe you're going traveling—then we recommend getting one or more of these excellent apps installed alongside whatever you already have on your phone. You'll find them very helpful for buses, trains, trams, cabs, and more.

Citymapper Citymapper is comprehensive but easy to use. Screenshot: Citymapper

Citymapper is one of the most well-established and well-respected public transit apps out there, and a lot of its success is down to how slick and simple it is to use. Even if you're lost in a city you've never been to before, Citymapper can get you to the right place.

There's very good coverage across cities worldwide. A Citymapper Club subscription gets you extras such as voice navigation, lock screen widgets, and an ad-free experience—but all of the key features are available for free.

All the info you need is put front and center, from how long it'll take to navigate a route to how much you're going to have to spend. There are neat features sprinkled throughout too, including a setting to increase or decrease the amount of walking you have to do.

Citymapper: Freemium for Android and iOS

Transit Transit makes complex routes straightforward. Screenshot: Transit

If you're interested in bus and subway routes specifically then Transit—which covers most major cities in the world—has you covered. It has a wealth of data on more than 300 locales, and it promises up-to-the-second details of timings and delays.

It's a really well presented app that doesn't take itself too seriously (though it absolutely will serve up accurate info for you), and it does a great job of showing the details you need when you need them. When your bus is about to leave, for example.

In busy cities, public transit options can feel overwhelming, but Transit helps you cut through the noise to find the options you need. An optional Transit Royale subscription gives you even more data and customizations.

Transit: Freemium for Android and iOS

Moovit Moovit quickly recommends the best route for you. Screenshot: Moovit

With data for thousands of cities and hundreds of countries, Moovit leads the world in terms of the raw data it has access to. No matter where you find yourself, chances are that Moovit can serve up the bus and train schedules you need.

The flow of the app is really well done, from searching for destinations to figuring out which stop and platform you need to be at. One of the more helpful features is a recommended route option that picks the best choice based on your chosen criteria.

If you don't want to travel right away, you can easily look up schedules for other times and dates, and when you do get moving you get straightforward step-by-step instructions. A paid subscription option removes the ads and gives you access to more live information.

Moovit: Freemium for Android and iOS

Momego You get a range of useful features included in Momego. Screenshot: Momego

Momego scores highly in all the categories that matter for a public transit app, including the quality of the data it serves up, the intuitiveness of the interface, and how easy it is to get started—and it's well worth trying for travel, wherever you find yourself in the world.

There's a lot under the surface of Momego, but the app keeps everything straightforward on the top: Just tell it where you want to go and how you want to get there. There's a premium subscription too, which removes the ads and offers extras like weather updates.

Among the most useful features: alerts when you need to get off whatever vehicle you're on, real time updates on routes, customizable widgets for your home screens, and the ability to plan your trips ahead of time for specific dates and times.

Momego: Freemium for Android and iOS

  More deals, reviews, and buying guides The PopSci team has tested hundreds of products and spent thousands of hours trying to find the best gear and gadgets you can buy.  

Public Radio Apps For IPhone - Macworld

Nordic farmers, Brahms in B minor, and Keynesian economic discussions may not seem to share a lot of common ground at first glance. But they do—at least on public radio. The eclectic mix of news, talk, and music available over the airwaves courtesy of public radio stations throughout the U.S. Would seem a perfect fit for the iPhone and iPod touch. After all, National Public Radio's assorted podcasts are a fixture among the Top 10 lists in the iTunes Store. A pair of public radio-friendly apps hope to make a similar splash on the App Store's charts.

Public Radio Tuner from American Public Media and MPR Radio from Minnesota Public Radio provide a similar experience, though each offer their own spin. Public Radio Tuner is a study in breadth, streaming hundreds of stations. MPR is focused on all the streams from one station.

Read more…

Live and Local: Public Radio Tuner's Local feature scans the airwaves to find a list of public radio stations near your current location.

All apps considered, the most useful public radio app has to be the Public Radio Tuner The free app provides a catalog of hundreds of public radio stations from across the country. You'll find the variety inherent in New York's twenty one public radio stations. And you can learn about the unique perspectives of public radio from outliers like KHPR-FM from Hawaii and Alaska's native Voice, KNBA from Anchorage—one of the eight available Alaskan stations.

You cannot underestimate the depth of variety in the available stations. Then again, a random sampling of stations often ended with the same type of content each day. It was fun to check which classical song was playing in Tallahassee, Boston, Chapel Hill one Sunday morning.

By far the most useful feature is Public Radio Tuner's Local screen. It prompts you to allow Public Radio to access your current location. Tap OK, and the app quickly delivers a list of pubic stations sorted by distance from your current location. From my Northern Virginia home, Public Radio Tuner correctly found WAMU 88.5 within 50 miles of me as well as several Baltimore and Norfolk stations within 50 to 250 miles from me. This is most useful if you are driving through an area unfamiliar to you and want to get local news and weather.

As for MPR Radio, the app provides you with four streams form the upper Midwest—MPR News, MPR Classical, Radio Heartland and The Current. While News and Classical are self-evident, The Current and Radio Heartland are not so obvious. The Current is an interesting mix of "independent emerging artists alongside the legends who inspired them." Radio Heartland seems to be an interesting experiment. Only available on iPhone, the Web, and HD radio, Radio Heartland provides talk in the morning and "acoustic and Americana music throughout the rest of the day."

Fearsome Foursome: MPR Radio features content from just one station, but divides it into four distinct streams.

MPR Radio offers a pleasantly designed interface with a minimal footprint. Select one of the four streams, press play, listen to a brief message and then enjoy your stream. As with all apps that stream audio, these apps work best with a Wi-Fi connection but are also passable over 3G. EDGE-only listeners, beware.

One closing note: According to American Public Media, future plans for the Public Radio Tuner include "a catalog of on-demand audio [and] … direct listener contributions…" Sounds like things will only get better for public radio fans.

Public Radio Tuner is compatible with any iPhone or iPod touch running the iPhone 2.X software update, while MPR Radio requires the iPhone 2.1 software.

[Jeffrey Hatton is a freelance writer living in Virginia.]

Cascade Public Media App Aims To Deliver Long-awaited ... - Current

This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. The action you just performed triggered the security solution. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data.

---