A to B: Ljubljana
Don’t Miss a Thing: Quick and Green Ljubljana in the Palm of Your Hand
The free of charge mobile service ‘A to B: Ljubljana’ (‘A to B: LJ’)
The mobile application is available in online stores for both the Android (GooglePlay) and the iOS (iTunes) platform
Ljubljana, Celovška cesta: a typical packed morning, overflown with cars at a standstill, containing no more than one passenger on average. Attention though, this only applies to stationary cars. Everything else rushes on: from buses to cyclists and people on foot. If one could say that yesterday the quickest way to get from the outskirts of Ljubljana to the city centre was by car, then this is no longer true today. When you finally arrive in the centre, you still have to get your head around finding a parking space, whereas with other modes of mobility, you have already reached your destination.
As a result, the only other thing that we need today to help us in making the wise choice of planning a quick and green route through Ljubljana is the ‘A to B: LJ’ mobile application. The mobile application combines three forms of sustainable transport in the city of Ljubljana: cycling (BicikeLJ – the city’s rent-a-bike system), buses (Ljubljana Passenger Transport – LPP), and walking.
Or, as the jury (composed of Roger Black, Anette Lenz, Alice Twemlow, Oliver Reichenstein, and Nedjeljko Špoljar) for the Brumen Awards in the category of mobile and web applications at the 6th Biennial of Slovene Visual Communications wrote:
“A well-designed app for smartphones that is not just packed with content, but an app in the true sense of the word. This is an interactive city guide, based on a standard database of maps. It also shows the current public transport timetables in the interactive route search, including the self-service bicycle hire stations. The design is clear and very usable.”
So how does the ‘A to B: LJ’ mobile application work?
After starting the application, determine or confirm the recognized current/starting location (A) via GPS, enter the final location (B), and a route to the desired destination will be conjured up before your eyes. The application will offer you the choice of three sustainable modes of transport in Ljubljana: BicikeLJ (bike), bus and walking.
In addition to outlining the route, the interactive city guide also includes all other necessary data:
- route duration
- distance in kilometres
- a detailed map of the route
- the BicikeLJ station that is closest to the starting and ending point of the route
- the number of available bikes and free spaces at each BicikeLJ station
- the nearest bus stop with bus departure time and duration of the bus ride as well as
- information where to exit or change buses
In addition to all this, the app is:
- simple to use
- superbly designed
- free of charge
- informative (with the aim to save time)
- allows you to choose between various routes to reach a destination
- sustainable
The advantage of the mobile app is therefore to provide the user with the most optimal (sustainable) choice of bridging the distance from A to B in an extremely simple way. This is also one of the first instances of including bicycles as a sustainable, publicly accessible means of transport into a mobile application of a European city, representing a better and more integrated level of engagement for both the user and the city of Ljubljana.
The ‘A to B: LJ’ application is therefore a new acquisition in building a green and developed mobile transport network especially for Ljubljana. It encourages all citizens, commuters, and travellers to use public transport, thus creating conditions for improving the traffic chaos in the wider region, which represents another vital step towards improving the quality of life for residents and visitors to the city.
The background of the ‘A to B: LJ’ project
The conceptual design of the mobile application was produced in the “Designing an agenda, or, how to avoid solving problems that aren’t” service and information design creative camp that took place in April 2013 and was organized by the Regional Development Agency of the Ljubljana Urban Region (RRA LUR) and the Pekinpah Association.
The first test version of the application for iOS was presented at the ‘European Mobility Week’ in September 2013. This time, the pilot version developed for the iOS platform is joined by a mobile application developed and upgraded for the Android platform.
Join us on a quick and green journey!
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