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iOS & Mac reviews Reviews

Tube Map Live, a cool new app from the Tube Tracker guy

I’m a big fan of Andy Drizen’s Tube Tracker, one of my three favourite London travel apps I wrote about here. It has some very cool features, one being the ability to track particular trains across the network in real-ish time using TfL data.

Andy’s just released a new app, Tube Map Live (Free), which takes that Tube Tracker feature and applies it to the whole London Underground Map, and it’s pretty damn cool. Take a look:

live tube map app

First launch triggers a quick tour but it’s pretty straightforward: you can zoom in and out with a pinch, turn lines on or off by tapping their name in the scrolling ticker below, and tap on a train to display it’s destination and location. If you’ve got Tube Tracker installed you can jump over there to get more detailed info.

live-tube-map

It’s not quite accurate enough to plan a journey as TfL’s live train data can be patchy in places – I’ve occasionally seen a random train shooting along the line overtaking everyone else, and I’ve not had a look late at night yet but Andy says the data TfL sends often shows ‘ghost trains’ whizzing around – but I can definitely match up trains I hear passing nearby with those on the map. The integration with Tube Tracker is fun (and I do love that yellow-on-dark icon) but it would be cooler still if TT was updated to be able to send train tracking information back to a friend’s Live Tube Map, not just their TT app.

But I’m nitpicking – it’s a fun wee novelty that’s enjoyable to scroll around and watch, and a good advert for some of the smart features in Tube Tracker, all for the awesome price of Free.

Thanks for reading!