The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) has partnered with Waymap to create a comprehensive map of the system, bringing the company’s proprietary SmartStep technology with its step-by-step audio instructions to anyone with a smartphone. The technology is accurate to within three feet.
“We are thankful for their commitment to wayfinding and making the system accessible to all,” Sarah Meyer, WMATA chief customer experience and engagement officer, said via email.
WMATA began working with Waymap on a pro bono basis four years ago in its effort to map the network’s 11,000 bus stops across 325 routes and 98 rail stations. Users of the Waymap app can now download the WMATA network to their phones. Crucially, the technology does not rely on the need for outside communications with GPS or a Wi-Fi or cell signal, but instead uses positioning technology on the mobile device itself. This includes a gyroscope, which senses direction; an accelerometer, which senses speed; a barometer, which senses altitude; and a magnetometer, which is in essence a compass.
Waymap captures the “raw unstructured noisy information,” which is then processed via a suite of artificial intelligence-based algorithms which transform the data into step length and step direction, explained Celso Zuccollo, Waymap CEO.
“What that means is, if we know where you are, and you take a step, we know how long that step is and in what direction it is. And we can continue to follow you regardless of whether you are above ground, underground, in a train station, in a hospital, multifloor, etc.,” he said. “And that really is the secret sauce of Waymap.”
In 2021, the company began a pilot project scanning the Crystal City station, which led to scanning all of WMATA’s rail stations including transfer points and other publicly available areas, WMATA officials said. To create the maps, the company relied on lidar technology and detailed station maps from WMATA.
Perhaps the most important feature of Waymap’s navigation, its CEO said, is its accuracy and consistency of operations regardless of the location.
“We didn’t want our app to lose you, when other systems lose you,” Zuccollo said.
“That’s one of the real things that prevents people with disabilities from getting out there,” he added. “It’s the confidence that you’re going to make it to your destination, and regardless of what happens along the journey, you’ll make it back.”
It’s not just visually impaired users who can benefit from this type of mapping technology. Washington, D.C., sees millions of visitors annually who could also benefit from detailed step-by-step instructions across the region’s metro transit system. Users simply download the app, and then download the system’s maps onto their phone.
“Once you’ve got those maps downloaded you can put your phone into Airplane Mode, and you get the same experience,” Zuccollo said, indicating the technology “is literally just following the cellphone as the cellphone moves around.”
Waymap has mapped shopping malls, sports stadiums, hospitals, museums and libraries, but it has never mapped an entire transit network as large and sophisticated as the Washington, D.C., metro system. The company will soon launch a pilot project with another U.S. transit agency, which Zuccollo declined to name.
For users concerned about personal data privacy, Waymap does not collect personally identifiable information from its users, and complies with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation.
“We know absolutely nothing about who was doing what at what time. Because it’s all living on the cellphone,” said the CEO, who described working with WMATA as “... the first time we have been able to deploy, at this scale. We would hope that this serves as a blueprint for scaling across, first of all, transit across the United States, but also, into other public buildings.”
Editor’s note: The number of railway stations the app serves has been updated in this story.
