Trainboard takes on iSEPTA with regional rail iPhone app

There’s a new SEPTA app in town.

We must confess, ever since iSEPTA, we have been hard pressed to find a Philadelphia transit iPhone application that we would actually, you know, use on a daily basis. As of now, the Apple App store is mostly filled with nationally-focused apps that offer a Philadelphia version, such as iTransitBuddy.

Trainboard (iTunes link), however, is locally produced by Patrick Casady, as Caffeine Fish, out of his apartment near Girard College. Casady maintains the company part-time as a side project.

“New York has really good transit apps, but I looked at Philly’s selection and it sucked,” says the Drexel grad.

Unlike iSEPTA, Trainboard is a downloadable application and not a website, so most of the data is located on the user’s phone. The app is also able to use your current location to find nearby trains. However, unlike iSEPTA, Trainboard isn’t free.

The app is Casady’s first. He says it pulls from the Google Maps data that SEPTA makes public and stores it locally, on the user’s phone. The app then scrapes SEPTA.org to incorporate lateness and delays.  No subway or bus data yet, but that was on purpose.

“I just wanted to do one thing really well,” he says.

Casady, will only consider adding the additional transit lines if the app can be more than a schedule board. For example, each of SEPTA buses make their exact GPS location available in its data set. Casady said he can envision adding the ability for Trainboard to see where your next bus is down to tens of a meter.

Trainboard will be on sale for $0.99 until next Monday.