Three customised Citymapper smart buses loop around the city centre, taking roughly half an hour from Waterloo across the Thames to Blackfriars and around again.Īny conversation on the future of transport inevitably turns to self-driving cars. But this week the app company branched out into the real world by testing a 'smaller, nimbler vehicle' in London. It certainly is complex, which is why plenty of commuters and travelers already swear by the free travel information app from Citymapper, which is in 39 cities around the world. Rogan knows all the buses around Wimbledon where she lives, 'which is great around tennis time,' but like many Londoners struggles to decipher the tangled network of routes beyond her own area. She was meeting a friend to go to an exhibition - ' Wolfgang someone, it looks awful' - and was running late, so she jumped on board the smart bus with us. On Tuesday morning we stood waiting at bus stop near the River Thames when Vivienne Rogan, who lives on the outskirts of London, asked us the way to the Tate Modern art gallery. And to our surprise, it was actually quite nice.

1 rule of using public transport in London: Don't talk to anyone. The most unusual thing about it was that people - strangers, no less - were breaking the No. The Citymapper smart bus is no normal London bus, and not just because it's green instead of red.

City mapper bus