Monthly Archives: June 2012

A new page for every metro station – introducing a new look for Metropedia

For each of our online metro maps, we provide an accompanying “Metropedia” with a webpage for every metro station and metro line (for example People’s Square in Shanghai, Kowloon in Hong Kong). We’ve just designed all the Metropedia pages to match the style of our new beta metro maps. Highlights of the new pages include:

  • New stylish header with a snapshot photo of the location
  • Fast facts including the name of the station in multiple languages and audio pronounciation
  • Location map from Google Maps
  • Tips contributed by the users of our iPhone apps
  • Photos from the area around each station
  • Nearby places from Wikipedia and Skimbl
  • Works well on phones and tablets as well as desktop browsers

Check out the Metropedia homepages for for ShanghaiBeijingGuangzhouSingaporeHong Kong and Taipei, and do let us know if you have any suggestions on how to improve the Metropedia pages!

Sample page:

Sample page on iPhone:

 

Faster loading, faster route-planning on our beta metro maps

We’ve just launched some more incremental improvements to our beta metro maps for ShanghaiBeijingGuangzhouSingaporeHong Kong and Taipei

  • By popular demand, you can now drag between two stations to plan a route (this is how route-planning works in the classic version). You can also use the new method of clicking on the first station, choosing “Plan route” and clicking on the second station.
  • It’s also now quicker to plan a new route after planning your first route – no need to dismiss the route-planning bar
  • Finally, we’ve improved the caching of the map tiles, so the map should load much faster on repeat visits

 

We’ll continue to work on fixing bugs and making improvements in the beta version until they surpass the classic versions 🙂 If you spot any errors, or have any feedback on how to improve the beta versions, do let me know in the comments, or via our support page.

Updates for our beta metro maps

Since we launched the “beta” versions of our online metro maps a few weeks ago, we’ve received lots of great feedback from our loyal users. Some people love them, some people have found problems or issues and want to go back to the old versions.

Just to let you know, we are reading and responding to all the feedback, and continuing to make improvements to the beta version. Today we made several improvements to our beta maps for ShanghaiBeijingGuangzhouSingaporeHong Kong and Taipei, including:

  •  The default zoom level shows a larger area
  •  You can now zoom in/out smoothly, rather than only in steps of 2x
  •  When hovering over a station, you’ll see a “hand” cursor, making it clearer when you can click
  •  Fixed a bug where flags would disappear during route planning
  •  Faster loading of map tiles in China

To opt-in to the beta version, click the orange banner.

To opt-out and return to the classic version, click the ExploreMetro logo and choose “Don’t use beta”.

We’ll continue to work on fixing bugs and making improvements in the beta version until they surpass the classic versions 🙂 If you spot any errors, or have any feedback on how to improve the beta versions, do let me know in the comments, or via our support page.

Travelling from Guangzhou Baiyun Airport to downtown Guangzhou by metro

To help travelers to Asia’s biggest cities, we are running a series of articles on how to travel from major airports to downtown. Today, we’re focusing on Guangzhou.

Guangzhou’s main airport, Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport (CAN) is situated 28 km north of central Guangzhou.

The simplest way to get to downtown is via Guangzhou Metro Line 3. The station at the airport is named Airport South (Airport North is not yet open). The journey to the city (Tiyu Xilu station) takes about 42 minutes, and a one way ticket costs 7 RMB. Trains run every 7 minutes from 6:10am to 11:00pm.

Line 3 has interchanges with Line 2 at Jiahewanggang, Line 1 at Guangzhou East Railway Station and Tiyu Xilu, and Line 8 at Kecun

If you’re planning a trip to Guangzhou, we’ve got the resources you need for using the subway: visit our interactive subway map, print out a PDF map or download our iPhone/iPad app or Android app.

photo by: antwerpenR