So there are now quite a few apps available for the Dubai Metro. Most of them are free apps and a few you can pay for. I thought I would take a look at the Dubai Metro app that comes up first on the list in the UK App Store which is the app designed by MXData Ltd. The version I looked at was 1.3.36 on 10 June 2013.
The App contains 3 main section of functionality:
- A Map
- Route Finder
- Station Finder
Firstly the map. When I looked at this map it had the red and green lines listed with all the stations, however, it was out of date. The station for Jebel Ali Industrial was showing as not yet opened when in fact it had been opened on 12 December 2012 and renamed ‘Danube’ after some sponsorship was obtained for the station, thus making the map pretty much 6 months out of date. The map is available in Arabic as well as English if you flip the little turn page icon at the corner which is a nice touch.
Route Finder: You choose your ‘to’ and ‘from’ stations by typing in the start of the name (like using the routefinder). It only takes in names of stations so you can’t search for a route that includes a landmark rather than a station but it is simple and effective if you just want to know where to change trains if you have to. Probably the best use of it is to get an estimated journey time rather than actually using it for the route and in fact this is often the information that people really want. You can save your favourite journeys and you can choose between the fastest route and the one with least changes (although with only two lines there may not be much difference on the majority of journeys.)
Station Finder: You enter the name of the station and it will take you to the map and pinpoint it on there. You do have to know the name of the station (unless you use the nearby feature which will display a list of the nearest stations) so you need to know how the station name is spelled – for example if you enter ‘Fahidi’ rather than ‘Al Fahidi’ it will not come up with anything. So it doesn’t do partial name searches.
One downside is that it does not integrate with a street map at all so you will need to know where the stations are located with regards to roads as it won’t tell you that.
Basically a good simple app (after all it is free!) with probably its most useful point being estimated route time.
Have you used this app? Have you found it useful? Let us know by leaving a comment below.