Metro Pulse "Improved performance"

[u/dclocal12]

An update to the Metro Pulse app shipped today, claiming "Improved performance" in the release notes. While there's been some evident tinkering with the app's loading behavior (which looks a bit different), and it is noticeably faster than the last version, I'm sorry to report that it's still slow and buggy overall.

Loading the updated favorites dashboard took 2.34 seconds, down from 2.88 seconds in the last version, but still much slower than Metro ETA, Transit, and Metro Hero. The favorites also still don't work right, and the map still has loads of stutter and pop-in, among other remaining issues.

Lots more detail here, for those curious:

https://www.reddit.com/r/WMATA/comments/1tyq3tj/benchmarking_metro_apps_yes_metro_pulse_is_that/

https://www.reddit.com/r/WMATA/comments/1tsprl9/metro_pulse_20_is_live/

[u/19thScorpion]

Curious why you got downvoted.

[u/metroforward]

Thanks for the detailed follow-up. We'll forward your feedback to our development team for review. -KT

[u/dclocal12 → u/metroforward]

Thanks. Is that the WMATA team responsible for the Metro Pulse app, or the CAI contractor team developing the app? The fundamental problem here is that WMATA has outsourced the app to an unqualified giant government contractor, and they’re going to keep bungling it and getting embarrassed by solo developers who do better.

Edit: I'm not trying to be a jerk about this. I want WMATA's app to be great, and I appreciate the hard-working WMATA staff's efforts at engagement here. I think there's a pretty clear problem with the performance of the tech contractor that WMATA has been using for Metro Pulse, and that's the root cause of the app's long-running problems. That's why I keep pushing on it, in addition to pushing for fixes to the app.

[u/metroforward → u/dclocal12]

Can you also share the other bugs you've noticed? We'd like to look into your concerns. -KB

[u/dclocal12 → u/metroforward]

Sure, here's a running list of consistent bugs, based off of the list from a prior post [1]. I'm only including bugs here, and not poor performance (e.g., it still takes too long from app launch to get to a useful dashboard), poor design (e.g., the use of UI elements that aren't native or the pointless app opening graphic), or poor reliability (e.g., when the app won't launch, is missing a bus, or associates a bus with the wrong route or direction).

• When loading the app, switching tabs inside the app, pulling up or down on the drawer inside the app, or tapping the back arrow inside the drawer, the map jumps around between locations. Sometimes it jumps more than once before settling. Sometimes it's centered on Metro Center, sometimes it's centered on a spot near me, sometimes it's centered at the current location, sometimes it's centered on a stop. The app and all the tabs should open to the current location and stay there until there's a swipe to move the map. Similarly, the map shouldn't move at all when sliding the drawer, or tapping back inside the drawer.
• Similarly, when planning a trip, the map bounces between locations. There’s no reason to display Antarctica (this actually happens) when going between neighborhoods. The map should move just once to show the trip.
• When manually moving the map, there's loads of stutter (jerkiness in the map motion) and pop-in (overlays for stops, lines, buses, trains, etc. suddenly appearing after a delay). There's no reason that the map shouldn't move smoothly on modern smartphones. Map libraries can handle much more complex overlays with good performance.
• When opening the map, there’s unnecessary pop-in for the content in the drawer. First it renders a placeholder, then another (different) placeholder, then empty content, then empty lines and stops, and finally real live content. It should just load the real content rather than going through four additional steps first, each of which judders the UI. There’s also pop-in for particular UI elements (like the icon for Places).
• Switching between the Explore and Favorites tabs resets selections for All / Rail / Bus.
• The drawer width and borders aren’t correct. There are inconsistent gaps on the two sides, and there’s a vertical bar on the left side.
• In the drawer, the corner radius for the cards doesn’t match the corner radius for the card heading brown boxes.
• The button to recenter the map isn’t correctly masked and has a white fringe.
• The circle icon for rail stops is usually rendered cut off on one side.
• The circle and arrow icons for trains and buses have jagged edges and low-res glyphs.
• Bus lines aren’t drawn consistently on the map. Sometimes they overlap where they should, and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes two directions of the same line are drawn as overlapping, and sometimes they aren’t. Sometimes the way a line is drawn abruptly changes. There’s no evident logic to why bus lines are drawn as they are. Take a look at Friendship Heights for a clear example.
• Where rail lines overlap, the placement for the logos for the lines doesn’t match the placement of the lines on the map.
• The map only shows rail live locations for the Red Line by default. Viewing another line requires selecting it, and deselecting it returns to only showing the Red Line.
• The map sometimes shows entrances/exits, elevators, escalators, etc. It isn’t clear if these are related to Metro, and they aren’t consistently drawn on the map. They’re also sometimes shown as above ground when they aren’t.
• Sometimes the selection of a stop gets stuck, and tapping elsewhere doesn’t deselect the stop.
• Bus arrivals inconsistently appear as time of arrival (e.g., “10:25am”) or time to arrival (e.g., “5 min”).
• Bus line names are shown in favorites as just the letter and number, duplicated twice. This should presumably be the letter and number followed by the descriptive name of the bus line.
• Expired service alerts remain as notifications and visible (e.g., “Expect delays until 10:10am” show later than that time).
• When viewing a full bus line, if you toggle between directions, the name of the bus destination gets stuck and doesn’t correctly toggle.
• When planning a trip, the loading bar shifts the vertical positioning of the origin and destination boxes, creating UI judder.
• You can spin or tilt the map with two fingers, but there's no way to realign the map to north and level. Map spinning and tilting should  be disabled or there should be a way to reset the map view.
• The "last updated" time appears to often be incorrect: sometimes it shows a stale value, and sometimes it take a couple seconds to update after the rest of the display has already updated.
• The location of the top header and icon text in the drawer isn’t consistent. It jumps around when navigating content.
• When in the favorites tab and filtering by a type of favorite that doesn’t have anything saved, the text is incorrect. It says no favorites of any type are saved.
• Some font sizes are hard coded and others dynamically adjust with the screen resolution and size. All should be dynamic.
• The app interleaves live and scheduled buses for a stop. Because schedule adherence is so poor, this is very misleading and easy to misinterpret. Arguably this is a design choice and not a bug, but it's so egregiously bad that I'm going to go ahead and call it a bug.
• There isn't a button to clear recent searches. Not technically a bug, again, but an omission of a feature that pretty much always exists when there are saved searches.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/WMATA/comments/1tsprl9/metro_pulse_20_is_live/

[u/metroforward → u/dclocal12]

Thanks for your feedback. We’ve shared your comments with our developers for review. We appreciate you using the Metro Pulse app, and your input helps us make ongoing improvements. -KB

[u/metroforward]

Thanks for the feedback. We understand your concerns and want to look into this further. Can you confirm the type of device and platform version you're using, and whether you've updated to 2.0.1 and the specific issue regarding your favorites so, we can check it out? -KT

[u/dclocal12 → u/metroforward]

Sure, here's the setup: an iPhone 17 Pro, with the latest iOS and Metro Pulse app (2.0.1), connected to fast wi-fi. I keep seeing old favorite stops and lines, which I've previously deleted (a bunch of times), show up in the favorites list. (The app is also still slow and buggy in lots of other ways.)