Smartphone app

There's absolutely no doubt that London Midland have to be applauded for the smartphone app which they've just launched.  I've had "Train Times", the Network rail equivalent loaded onto my iPhone for over a year and wouldn't be without it, but that one cost £4.99.  The London Midland version is free!

This app isn't perfect, but the shortfalls are minor, few in number, and hopefully fixable by update.

Looking at the main features:

The "Live departures & arrivals" function is a copy of the full Network Rail version and is very, very useful.  So too is the "Journey planner", another feature copied from "Train Times".  The only issue I had with both features was that the default for station selection when I first installed the app was "Nearest" which made it rather difficult to find London Euston. A minor irritant only...

Now for a few things that London Midland have which Network Rail don't provide, all under the major heading of "Info"...

The "Disruption information" feature should be very useful, though I did notice yesterday that it didn't appear to provide any info on the major problems arising from the overhead line damage that shut-down all WCML services into Euston for a few hours yesterday.  This might be because the info is individual train-based and is being auto-generated from another system, but if true then it seems surprising that London Midland didn't think to provide a field for general updates.

"London Underground status" is a link to a mobile version of the TfL website so on an iPhone it opens up Safari.  That's fine, but as iPhone users know if you already have 9 tabs open then it will take one tab down without asking.  In this respect it is no different to email and other apps with web links, but it might have been nice if they'd highlight that this is a link rather than an internal feature of the app.

What is really, really useful is the next one on the list,"@londonmidland on Twitter".  Anyone who follows David and his comms/marketing team know that @londonmidland has deservedly won industry awards for their excellent Twitter feed, so this feature gives direct access to the live information regardless of whether you are a Twitter user or not (and although I am, I will use this feature as I think it will give quicker access to @londonmidland info as it avoids the need to scroll through other tweets).

Next up is "Timetables" which appears to give access to a PDF-type version of the main and pocket London Midland timetables that can be picked up at the station.  Useful.

Selecting "Car parking" allows second-level selection of your station and then the method of payment (web, SMS or phone).  Again, useful.

Last but by no means least under "Info" we get "Delay Repay".  London Midland have to be applauded for any steps which make it easier to make a claim, but this could have been better if they'd allow users to set up their details by default (name, address, and phone).  Also, like their web-based form they don't provide a comment field so it isn't possible to add details about train changes etc.

The final features are "Email us" and "Phone us".  The latter deserves a special mention. It would have been so easy for London Midland to use their 0844 811 0133 number, trapping users with a call-inclusive package into ringing an extra, high-cost number.  They haven't.  The number that the app wants to dial is 0121 634 2040.  I am impressed!

So what's missing?  To be honest, the only thing I can think of is ticket prices and perhaps some info on things like station facilities and maybe an FAQ area covering stuff like peak/off-peak periods, the rules on bicycles, etc.   


So to sum up, London Midland have done a really good job.  With a bit of tweaking and the addition of the missing fare info this could be one of those few apps which rate 5* (iTunes currently shows 4+ which is pretty good for a version 1.0 !!)


If you've got the app too then I'd really like to know your opinion of it.  What do you think?



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