22
Jan
In this review I’m going to give you a quick rundown of "Métro".
It’s been 8 years since I first installed this application on my (now ancient) Palm Pilot. And it’s just as indispensable now as it was back then.
Métro is a public transit guide, it covers over 400 different cities in about 40 countries. You’ll find major cities like Tokyo, London and New York, but also cities with a small(er) network like Charlotte or Cardiff.
Métro is available for Palm, PocketPC, Smartphone and most Symbian versions. Users of the iPhone or Blackberry can use the online version with their mobile browser.
Installation is fairly simple, you run the "setup.exe" program and Métro will install itself to your device. But without any transit networks it’s next to useless, so you’ll have to select the cities you need, and copy them to your handheld.
With so many cities to chose from, it takes some time to select the ones you need, but on Windows Mobile it’s thankfully just a case of drag and drop to copy them. Just open the folder you installed the program to, and place the files in it.
The files are quite small, from around 0.5KB to 290KB (for Paris). If you can’t pick, or just want to play it safe, you can copy all 409 cities (10.9MB) but keep in mind that the application becomes quite sluggish if you do.
Once you are done copying, you can open the application on your device.
The interface of Metro isn’t the most intuitive ever made, so prepare to mess around with it a bit to learn what each button does.
(Image from Metro web site)
If you click on options, then network you’ll get a list of all the route networks installed on your device. Double tap on the city you want to use.
The top field is for the departure location (Métro lets you pick stations, points of interest and major streets):
Click the small "walking man" icon to calculate the best route to your destination, what Metro does not do is show a timetable for the route. You’ll get the average time the trip will take, how to connect and where to get off but you will have to check the timetables posted at the stop to see when the next train/tram/tube/bus arrives:
If you click on the question mark icon, you’ll get a great overview of how that specific transit network operates. Everything from ticket prices, to closed and diverted lines will be posted in that screen:
There isn’t much else to say about Métro. It’s free, it’s not the best looking application out there, but it gets the job done. It’s perfect if you are somewhere with a complicated transit network or a city where the locals are not very helpful.
Download link: Métro website
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