Valley Metro 4+

Thank you

Your bus driver was awesome
My family kind of left for their flight with out any help or a plan for my later flight. I think the driver’s name is Geraldine but gave me all the information I needed and a ride to Panera. It’s surprising how friendly a complete stranger is compared to your own siblings. Thanks again and please consider giving her a raise. She is route 184 and picked me up at the airport at about 8:30

Inefficient morning rides

The east bound buses; Camelback, Indian School, Thomas, McDowell start at 4am-ish but the first two morning runs end at 50-something street, they make sure everyone is off the bus and then continue going eastbound EMPTY!!! How much sense does that make? You’re paying the driver, you’re running the same way, why make people get off the bus and wait for the next bus to maybe show up. I say maybe because I’ve now noticed that the McDowell bus at least once a week, the first bus that runs the full route doesn’t show up? So Valley Metro pays 8 drivers(4 EB routes at 4am and 430am) and at least one other driver that doesn’t show up once a week to not pick up passengers? How can you advertise as being good for the environment when you’re needlessly driving empty after kicking people off the bus? And supposedly just added better morning coverage? Where? How? Brain dead people running this org.

And why are the smart cards only available for businesses? 8th largest municipality and we’re going to the gas station to get a bus pass when they could just make the smart cards available to everyone and reloadable from your phone. Or… most smart phones have nfc we don't even need a smart card just need to make the option to do everything through the app. Silly people.

Too Little, Too Late

Valley Metro has a history of stubbornly doing things its own way rather than following best practices in the industry. For years, it has dragged its feet about releasing real-time bus and train location data. With this app, that has finally changed, but the agency is still behind where it should be with respect to data sharing and transparency. The real-time data is helpful when it actually appears, but in my experience it is not uncommon for a “location not available” message to appear when a specific bus is selected. Even when the data is available, there are significant usability issues with this app. If a user pulls up scheduled arrivals for a specific location and then looks to see where a specific bus or train is currently situated, there is then no easy or intuitive way to return to the original list of scheduled service. Finally, I’d prefer not to have to download and install yet another app when both Google and Apple Maps already do a better job of displaying transit information. Valley Metro should focus its efforts on sharing real-time data with established third-party apps rather than creating its own product.

Developer Response ,

We understand your frustration and the delay in technology, but the reason Valley Metro created their own app was to introduce mobile fare tickets in upcoming versions. We wanted to give riders the technology we have now which includes trip planning and real-time vehicle tracking. We are looking forward to mobile fare in the next year and creating even more enhancements for our riders. You can also access our open data feed by visiting https://phoenixopendata.com/.