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If you're like us, you have an iPhone.
This means two things: 1.) You are very cool, and B.) You can now use your iPhone to access SEPTA Regional Rail schedules via iSepta!
iSepta is an application that lets iPhone users check train schedules, plan their trips, and perform a few other sundry SEPTA tasks, all via their iPhone.
(Geek alert! Actually it's a "web application" or "web app," in that it is not a software application on your phone, but software you access on the internet through a web browser.)
iSepta was developed in partnership by local boy Jason Tremblay and other local boys Chris Conley and Randy Schmidt of ümlatte. According to their blog:
Our goal was to make accessing the SEPTA regional rail schedules simple on your cell phone... Although SEPTA's presentation of schedules works great on paper pamphlets, it leaves something to be desired on mobile devices... We decided to throw away any preconceived notions of how users should interact with train schedules and think we came up with sexy solution that you see...
Very sexy.
But unlike most things sexy, it's not very complicated: simply select "New Trip" and choose your starting destination, then your ending destination and faster than you can say "rate hike," the five most current train times are displayed. You can also reverse directions for return trip times as well as check out the weekend schedule for those Sunday jaunts to Paoli. It will even save your three most recent trips so you don't have to go searching for what time the last R2 leaves Warminster.
There's also this little nugget:
Text message support! Simply text "iseptanow start station name to stop station name" to 41411 and receive the next 3 trains. For example, typing "iseptanow market to doylestown" will return the next 3 trains from Market East Station to Doylestown. You only have to type enough of the start and end stations to make it unique, so "iseptanow mark to doy" will also work.
Phillyist tried this on the iPhone and it took about 40 minutes to get a response, which was disappointing. It's a cool feature so hopefully the response time will improve.
The boys are promising updates including displaying route names and realtime updates on all SEPTA trains that are running behind or canceled.
We may have lost street cred over the Earthlink debacle, but iSepta may just give Philly some well-deserved geek cred.
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1. I assume the text message things works for those of us who can't afford iPhones, if we just use our regular phones?
2. Can you get bus/subway schedules too? Or just trains?
Dear iPhone-less Jill,
1. I would assume so, it seems text based. Give it a shot! I believe it also works on Blackberrys and any phone that has an internet browser since it's a web app.
2. No. It just has train schedules. Maybe bus/subway schedules are on the way, but they are not mentioned on umlatte's blog.
3. Buy an iPhone (after June 6th).