MTD Pulse

Beginning Tuesday, January 21, all MTD passengers will be upgraded to Transit Royale, the premium subscription in the Transit app. Along with this complimentary upgrade, passengers will have access to additional features, custom branding, new customization options, and complete access to the app across more than 300 supported cities worldwide.

MTD's current passenger information resources, including real-time departure information, trip planning, and at-the-stop displays will all remain the same. This partnership with the Transit app simply offers more.

Features of the Transit app include:

• Track your ride: As soon as you open Transit, you'll see all upcoming routes and departures for the bus stops closest to you.
• Real-time trip planning: Trips can be planned with your needs in mind, such as limiting walking distance, combining trips by bike or rideshare services, or filtering in wheelchair accessibility. The app features mapping displays across multiple routes and modes.
• Digital fares: MTD's digital fare payment app, Token Transit, is built into the Transit app, so there is no need to shuffle back and forth to purchase and activate a pass.
• Step-by-step navigation with GO: Tap GO to see when you should leave, when to transfer, and when to get off the bus. Subscribe to push notifications so you know when you’re almost there and when you’ve arrived.
• Ride surveying: Answer questions about your trips while riding to help other passengers gauge crowding, cleanliness, accessibility, and more. The more passengers you help, the higher your score on that route's leaderboard!
• More routes, departures, and trips: Passengers have full access to view all bus stops, all routes, and all departures, from any place in Champaign-Urbana. When planning a trip, passengers can also view additional itineraries and pick what works best.
• Location icons: Save frequently visited locations like work, school, and home, with over 20 icon options. These icons will show up on the map and allow quicker trip planning and navigation.
• Fixed-route and on-demand services: If your trip requires a transfer between fixed-route buses and on-demand vans, like Northeast Connect, West Connect, or SafeRides, Transit will help you complete the trip from start to finish.
• App branding: Passengers can change the look of their app with a special MTD app icon and accent colors.
• Custom GO avatar: Add personal flair to MTD route leaderboards; Royale allows you to pick any nickname and emoji combination to represent yourself.

Additionally, this partnership will bring additional features to our customers in the coming months. MTD is working diligently with Transit app to enable enhanced reroute and service disruption information. Altered trips and bus stops will be reflected in the app for reroutes both planned and unplanned, brief and extensive.

Installing Transit and accessing these premium features is easy: on your mobile device, navigate to your app store ("Apps" for Apple/IOS devices or "Google Play" for Android devices) and search "Transit." The app will appear with a green and white icon and the title, "Transit - Subway & Bus Times." Clicking this link will also take you there. To install the app, tap "Get" or "Install."

Once the app is installed, you can open it to find an in-app banner informing you that we’ve upgraded you to Royale. From there, simply tap to redeem your free subscription. You can also scroll through the list of routes on the home screen, or tap the gear icons to access the settings menu. When you see the crown, tap to claim your free Royale subscription.

If you experience issues while redeeming your in-app upgrade, please contact the Transit team directly by emailing info@transit.app and describing the issue.