With millions of fitness trackers and smartwatches in use the length and breadth of the UK, people are more conscious than ever of reaching our recommended 10,000 daily steps!
For bus operators, ‘Active travel’ is a great opportunity to tap into this national narrative. Public transport has a huge part to play because every journey includes a walk to and from bus stops. Promoting the use of public transport, not only as environmentally friendly but as something that can also positively contribute to individual health and wellbeing, is a powerful message.
In our next app release, Evans, we are beginning to encourage users to think about the ‘active’ parts of their journey, by including step count information in relevant places throughout the app.
Users will be able to see how many steps they will make when they follow a journey plan provided by the app, and how this might contribute to their daily target.
We’ll also be adding an indication of how long it’ll take to walk in any direction from a user’s current location or a selected stop on the Explore screen. This is shown with an ‘as the crow flies’ dashed circle showing distance, in minutes and steps, from their current location. As the user zooms in and out the walking indicator automatically updates to help them quickly gauge walking distances.
By including this information we hope that users will, over time, naturally see more reasons to choose the bus over driving a car.
This update aims to support any operator already promoting ‘active travel’ in their marketing and for those that don’t yet we hope it provides a great reason to!
What’s new in Evans
Updated Explore View
The Explore view shows how long it will take to walk from the users’ current location or from a selected bus stop. The walking circles automatically update when you zoom in and out on the map.
Location-based walking circle 
Bus stop walking circle
Updated Journey Planner Results
Journey planner results and individual journey plans show the total step count for a journey plan and the number of steps for each walking leg of the journey plan.
Journey plan results with total step count 
Journey plan with step count