KISS MY APP: Ticket to ride

Some of the apps we feature here at Kiss My App are a bit silly. Some of them are downright useless. But these apps are, well, downright useful. Whether you're a student, a CEO or an eccentric journalist who writes a column about iPhone apps, chances are you'll be caught in one of Australia's major capital cities, looking to navigate a foreign public transport system or just get from A to B on time. Here are the best public transport apps for Melbourne, Sydney, Perth and Brisbane. The app for the city you live in is essential, but if you're a travelling salesman or woman, you might want all four.

MetLink Melbourne

This app, available free from the iTunes store, provides information on Melbourne's tram, bus, train and V/Line (long distance train) networks. It even has a section for the Nightrider bus, which is Melbourne's bus network designed especially to ferry merry-makers around all night, well after traditional public transport has closed down.

It also has a 'next five minutes' feature, for all routes, a journey planner to help you get from A to B using varying modes of transport and times of departure, maps, timetables and a 'nearby' feature that uses the app's location feature to tell you what public transport is close to where you are at any given time. It's a cracker of an app that makes public transport a breeze.

TripView Sydney Lite

This free version of a full app called TripView Sydney is great... once you learn how to use it. The down side to the free version is that you can't save your trips for use again later. But given that it only takes about 10 seconds to create a trip, it's certainly no biggie.

You can create a trip by train station, by bus route or suburb, and for the ferry, by wharf. You can select your train station by name, the distance from where you are, or by map. The others are just by name.

The app also carries service information, 'directions' (to out of the way places like Goulburn via Google Maps; how bizarre) and transportation maps. You can set the app to check for timetable updates daily or weekly.

Go Brisbane

Brisbanites, for you we have good news and bad news. The good news is that the best public transport app for Brisbane is this one, and it's pretty cool with some really useful features. The bad news is that both this app and the one for Perth (below) cost $3.99, despite the fact that they seem to be no more sophisticated than the free apps for Sydney and Melbourne.

The Brisbane app can search train by station, bus by route or ferry by terminal. Once you set up a route, you can save it in your favourites, change the day on which you want to travel or reverse the direction of travel. You can go through to see all the stops along the route or even see the route plotted on Google Maps.

Metro Perth

Yet again, this app proves that the least impressive of Australia's public transport apps are the ones you pay for. Although having said that, it does do the job.

Metro Perth looks suspiciously like the Metlink Melbourne app, but doesn't appear under the same developer's name. It's a lacklustre app with few options and no A to B feature.

You can search by train stops, bus stops or ferry stops and there's a 'next five minutes' feature for all of these variants. You can also save your favourite routes, look at full timetables, and at what public transport options are nearby. There's also an 'alterations', or perhaps disruptions, section.

If you have an application, for any device, that you'd like to suggest for review, please email us at kissmyapp@businessspectator.com.au . Also, be sure to check out Business Spectator's own free iPhone app at iTunes.

To read all Kiss My App reviews, click here.