By Conner Toffan

City launches new app to help users navigate Medicine Hat’s transit system

Apr 2, 2019 | 5:41 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB — The City of Medicine Hat launched an app and website on Tuesday morning that’s used all around North America to help bus riders see where the buses are.

The DoubleMap Bus Tracker app lets users see where their bus is in real-time and can help riders figure out when their bus is coming by using GPS locators.

“The DoubleMap app is a real time, live-tracking system where people can log-in and track where their bus is at anytime,” said Simon Amos, Manager of Community Access for the City of Medicine Hat.

The app can also send out announcements in case a bus is running late, or isn’t coming at all.

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“If there’s going to be delays due to bad weather or a vehicle breaking down we can add an announcement and then people can see in real time if there’s any issues in the system.”

The app releases with a goal in mind, to increase ridership on Medicine Hat’s city buses. While there are many who rely on buses for transportation, Amos hopes to attract more “choice” riders. These are riders who don’t necessarily rely on the bus for transport, but use it when it’s convenient.

“The app will hopefully encourage more people to use city transit and encourage those choice riders to get on-board and come ride with us,” said Amos, “it would attract choice riders because people love technology and they love to know exactly where the bus is and sometimes people don’t want to wait at bus stops because they don’t know how long the bus is going to take to get there.”

There’s also a way for the city to track their ridership numbers now, the city has put in sensors that will note whenever someone gets on a city bus.

“The passenger count system is some infrared camera’s at the doors. When you break the beam of those infrared camera’s it records the count and then it sends that to the system so we can check how many passengers got on at any location at any time of day,” said Amos.

Medicine Hat users will also be able to use DoubleMap Bus Tracker in any other city that uses the app.

Glitches were being experienced by Samsung users Tuesday morning however Amos says if you delete and download the app again their should be no issues.

The app is available on all platforms including the App Store and Google Play Store. For anyone who has no space left on their phone, the app has launched online as well.