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Public transport apps for several areas

We are doing a multi week trip and will be in Florence, and near Venice with day trips to: Bologna, Padua, Verona, Trieste, and Ferrara. So far I have found apps and ticket info for Florence, Venice, and Verona (the Verona app seems to be considered horrible but we are going to get the city pass for museums and bus use and just use the app for timetables) my searches haven't turned up anything conclusive for the other 4 (Bologna, Padua, Trieste, Ferrara). What would you all recommend for them?

Posted by
8383 posts

What would you all recommend for them?

A good guide book.

The 4 locations you listed are all completely walkable
Not sure why you would need an app

A paper map will serve you better for walking around in Venice than an app
Get the Chebateo? app for vaporetto service

Posted by
1629 posts

Google maps does a decent job of bus routes and route plotting but CityMapper is better. (At least it was in France I haven't used it in Italy yet.) You should have the Trenitalia app for trains and AppTaxi has worked really well for me in Northern cities to cabs.

The bus stops in Verona are really well marked and organized but the core of the city is pedestrian. Florence stops are less well marked and again the buses mostly go around the city core where walking is better. They have tap-in busses but you need separate cards for each person. There's a really good Venice vaporetto app the name of which is escaping me so that's worth looking into if you're going to be in Venice for any length of time.

I Verona and Padua I suggest taking public transport from the station for a short ride because the walk from the station is boring at first. In Bologna the walk down via Indipendenza from the train station under the colonnades is part of the experience.

Have a great trip,
=Tod

Posted by
672 posts

In Bologna, I liked using the old fashioned paper map that I picked up at the Welcome Bologna Tourist Information center in Piazza Maggiore better than my gps. They also have ticket information, a city pass, a list of opening hours of all museums and churches.

For Padua, I managed to get an RS guide with a Padua chapter (some editions include Padua but not all). The little city map and suggested walking tour in that chapter was sufficient for me.

Posted by
434 posts

For me, it's Google Maps. I haven't touched a paper map in 20 years. I have been to all the cities you listed except Trieste, and Google worked 98% of the time, even in Venice. For buying transportation tickets, I use the official app for whichever city I am in.

Posted by
16 posts

"For me, it's Google Maps. I haven't touched a paper map in 20 years. I have been to all the cities you listed except Trieste, and Google worked 98% of the time, even in Venice. For buying transportation tickets, I use the official app for whichever city I am in."

Well that last part was the point, that I found official or close enough recommended apps for all the places except the 4 I said I hadn't found anything like that for.

@hiredman Thanks that was a nice chunk of useful info!

@CD in DC Cool. Looks like we need to go to that welcome center anyway when we first get there for the food tour part of the group wants to do. So maybe we'll just grab that and have that be one thing we kind of wing it on since I may be over planning the rest sort of XD

Posted by
16864 posts

Moovit. Probably the best to cover transit in detail everywhere (including schedule and tracking buses on real time). That’s what I use.
https://moovitapp.com/
To walk around I just use GoogleMaps
Venice is always a problem for getting signal since alleys are so narrow and buildings often impair cell reception.