The Citymapper application that conveniently creates the fastest travel route with buses, metros, metro buses, minibuses, ferryboats, taxis and on-foot routes in big cities like New York, London, Paris, Hong Kong, Moscow and Barcelona has now come to Istanbul as well.

Thanks to features included in the downloadable application for desktop computers and smartphones, individuals can access data about navigation, bus times, travel fairs, calorie counts for pedestrians, estimated time of arrival, route-sharing for safe public transportation journeys and the location of bicycle trails.

The application includes the transportation projects launched by the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IBB) announced as part of the "2023 Vision in Transportation" that will be actualized in Istanbul in the next five years. It also provides information for those who want to make investments in real estate, land, shops and property in the city, or to those who want to choose a job relative to its location and transportation criterion.

Citymapper Turkey General Manager Erhan Erdoğan told Anadolu Agency (AA) that the U.K.-based application is currently being used in 40 countries around the world.

Erdoğan stated that the mobile application of the project can easily be downloaded to smartphones, and added that it creates a route via bus, subway, metrobus, the Marmaray, ferry, tram, minibus, taxi, bicycle and walking paths citywide. "The application combines all of these routes and offers options for people to use, namely, the metro, the bus or both depending on route preferences," he said.

Erdoğan explained that the application, which was launched in Istanbul on Feb. 2, has attracted a great deal of interest since then, noting that they are working on various ways to improve the project.

Erdoğan pointed out that the goal is to promote the future of the public transportation systems to be implemented in Istanbul through this application, saying: "We asked questions such as, ‘Would you like to travel to the Istanbul of the future?' to our application users. After receiving positive responses, we realized that there was a need for this application and that there were various questions on people's minds. For instance, some users wanted to have information about the housing investments in various districts of Istanbul and the positive or negative results of such investments, while others asked some questions about easy means of transport and public transport."

According to Erdoğan, one user recorded their home address in the application to determine how many minutes it would take to reach it five years later via public transportation vehicles. He underlined that they will include Istanbul's future projects in the application as well.

Erdoğan stated that Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality has a very broad vision regarding transportation, stressing that public transportation has become as important as investments in Turkey's health industry.

Underlining the importance of the project for Turkey, Erdoğan said: "Metro Istanbul has announced its 2023 vision. Accordingly, subway lines will see a four-fold increase in terms of how they are shown in maps. We analyze these projects, go to the stations, identify that a subway exists and analyze the ways in which people would benefit from the transportation, all the while recording this information in the application."

Erdoğan noted that they have determined information about location, metro doors, entrances and even how many minutes it takes for an individual to reach platforms and uploaded this information in the application.