HopStop, the location services app that helps you navigate the wacky world of public transportation, has today unveiled its biggest product launch ever, with the release of HopStop Live!
The service is integrated with HopStop’s default iPhone app, as well as having its own standalone app called “Live!” The apps let users crowd-source information in real-time about delays to subways or trains, giving even more clarity to the morning commute.
HopStop already accounts for delays that are marked on the MTA’s web site for service disruptions, but that isn’t an all-encompassing view. Many times, trains will be delayed because of police investigations or accidents, and the corresponding delay alert doesn’t appear online for many hours after, or not at all. Still, these delays can really bork up a day, and so HopStop is letting its massive user base start calling out issues for fellow users.
Though crowd-sourcing public transit delays has been done before — most notably by Waze and NextTrain, along with some other mobile apps — HopStop brings a new level of scale to the recipe.
As of today, HopStop has announced that its userbase has surpassed 2 million monthly active users, and the app access data points for 700 transit agencies, 20,000 lines, and 750,000 stops.
Here’s what CEO Joe Meyer had to say about it:
The real-time public transportation space has attracted so much attention over the past twelve months with a countless number of new transit apps all professing to have the answer to real-time. The problem with the vast majority of these is that as impressive and headline-grabbing as their goals or claims may be –they all lack the critical ingredient for any crowd-sourced service to be useful –a big enough crowd of endemic users. Over the past nine years, HopStop has grown to be the biggest independent player in the transit routing market, and today’s launch of HopStop Live! will leverage our large user base and strong commitment to product excellence to define the future of real-time public transportation information.
The main goal is that users will build and foster mini-communities around their particular commute, keeping each other in the know about delays and service disruptions in a way that official lines of communication are too slow for.
For now, the HopStop Live! service is only available for iPhone, but the company is working on rolling it out to other major platforms in the coming months.