floydbloke:

 

Imagine though if they made you leaf through a flyer from Harvey Norman or Mitre10 before you were allowed to step on the bus.

 

It's a bit of an exaggeration of course but that's what this feels like.  It's not the sort of app that you interact with for minutes, or longer, at a time, like a media publication, where ads potentially have a place. 

 

It needs to be snappy, I want to be able to see almost instantly when my bus will be arriving or what platform my train will be leaving from.  The Metlink app is far from that, and now they've made it worse.

 

Agree 100%. Sometimes I'll open it up to see whether it's worth running/jogging to catch the upcoming bus. So if I have to waste time doing something else and end up missing the window of opportunity to catch a bus that's a fail.

One other reason why I hope AT doesn't do this is their journey planner is miles ahead of Google Maps et al. Only the AT app seems to understand that most train stations in Auckland only have 2 platforms so it is fine to transfer between trains at the same station even when they arrive/depart only 2mins apart whereas Google Maps tells you that the next connecting train is 12mins later (when in fact it's the one arriving 2mins later you can just step onto and save 10mins). Drove me mad when I used Google Maps (as home to one of my workplaces is a double connection, so Google Maps adds at least 2x10mins=20mins for no reason) until I realised AT correctly calculates transfer times and switched to their app instead.