6 Life-Changing Apps to De-stress Your Morning Commute
They say life is about the journey, not the destination — but sometimes between bumper-to-bumper traffic, road closures and not enough coffee, it’s easy to forget. During the seemingly never-ending journey that is our daily commute, enjoying the ride can prove to be near impossible. That’s why this week, to Upgrade Your Life, we’re sharing six apps that will put your commute on cruise control and help you reach your destination with just a few taps of your finger.
1. Outsmart Traffic: You’re already late for an important event and you find yourself behind a mile of cars. Wouldn’t it be nice to have known about this jam ahead of time so you could have planned an alternate route? Waze is a social GPS app that shows you traffic, road conditions, weather hazards and even police sightings reported by a community of drivers in real time.
2. Be Punctual: No one wants to be known as the friend who is always late. Why not let the ETA app help? ETA is your driving assistant, offering you an accurate gauge of travel time, traffic and even turn-by-turn directions when linked to your favorite maps app. What separates ETA from other mapping apps is that it not only offers data on locations you input on-the-fly, but it also allows you to save those frequently visited locations for quick ETA retrieval in the future.
DL It: $1.99 on iOS
3. Hop On a Train: Even if you live in a city with excellent public transportation, sometimes you still miss your bus. Moovit offers live transit information such as station maps, line schedules, arrival times and even service changes and alerts. Moovit’s OmniSearch feature finds the quickest route to your favorite hot spots and helps you find new, hidden gems. Moovit offers support for major cities like New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Boston and more.
4. Get Pumped: With the powerful GPS cycling app BikeBrain, you get instant maps through Google and a geotagging feature to share quirky photos and videos en route. BikeBrain not only offers route details, such as your distance, speed and elapsed time, but it also provides a host of health metrics such as heart rate and calories burned. Want to bike to work with a friend? BikeBrain’s pairing feature supports cadence sensors for up to two bicycles.
DL It: Free on iOS
5. Keep It Simple: If you simply need a no-frills GPS app with a powerful mapping service at your fingertips, the Commute app is at your service. It monitors that route and alerts you 15 minutes before your departure time with travel times, current conditions and other incidents you might encounter along your route. It even connects directly to the MapQuest app to offer you voice-guided directions and lets you customize your route according to your to-do list for the day.
DL It: Free on iOS and Android
6. Teleport or Jetpack (just kidding): We sometimes wish we could just push a button and transport ourselves to our destination. Transit allows you to see how quickly you can get to your destination by public transit, car, bike, and even walking. It shows you how many calories you’d burn doing that last option also.
Let us know how you prefer to commute in the comments below!