In a world where Google Maps and Apple Maps are preinstalled on peoples’ smartphones, one app “eclipses” both for accuracy and ubiquity of transit information. That’s the assertion of Nir Erez, co-founder and CEO of Moovit, the world’s largest transit data and analytics company whose app already has been used by more than 80 million people in more than 1,500 cities and 78 countries. Erez pointed out the superiority of Moovit over Google Maps and Apple Maps today at the New Mobility World conference here.
Presenting at the session “Everything is Connected, Making Sense of Big Data,” Erez discussed how Moovit amasses up to 500 million anonymized data points a day from transit riders using the app and a network of more than 200,000 local editors called “Mooviters.” This data is used by Moovit to give its users more accurate real-time transit information, better service alerts coverage, more precise bus stop locations, and more reliable transit timetables than either Google Maps or Apple Maps, Erez said.
“Google and Apple are outstanding companies whose products and services have greatly enhanced our lives,” Erez said. “But when it comes to transit data, Moovit is the one true expert. Moovit’s precise and hyper-local transit data eclipses what’s offered by anyone else.”
For example, Moovit provides real-time transit coverage for thousands of transit operators worldwide, compared with hundreds by Google and even fewer by Apple. Erez showed a list of major cities where Moovit provides real-time data and Google and Apple do not: Hong Kong, Istanbul, Madrid, Paris, Rome, Sydney. “Try to ride public transit with any other service than Moovit in any of these cities, or many others in the world, and you will be very frustrated,” Erez said.
Bus stop locations are another area where Moovit excels over Google and Apple, according to Erez. Google and Apple plot stops using official transit data, which is wrong about ten percent of the time. Moovit relies on its technology and community of users to avoid those inaccuracies.
“Moovit knows the precise locations of bus stops because we see where people actually are congregating to board the bus,” Erez said. Additionally, many Moovit users post photos in the app of the true location versus the location on Google Maps. “Nothing beats local knowledge from people who are physically there,” he said.
Moovit’s crowdsourcing program is another Moovit advantage over Google and Apple, Erez said. More than 200,000 transit aficionados have joined the “Mooviter” program of local editors who use Moovit’s proprietary software to map the transit information in their communities. Of the hundreds of cities already added to Moovit this year, 65 percent were exclusively from the contribution of the Mooviters and are available only on Moovit.
“Moovit’s crowdsourcing model has made Moovit the Wikipedia of Transit,” Erez said.
