Tube Planner apps have existed on most platforms for some years, indeed PocketPC’s had a very well popular one from VisualIT, Tube. But TubeDeluxe is much better.

Route Planner

Author Malcolm Barclay has produced a very slick application that allows you to plan journeys across London via the Underground. It also has up to the minute information on delays and closures as well as a departure timetable.

Itinerary Route map

You can plan a journey by entering your start and destination and TubeDeluxe will plan the route and display it either on the Tube Map or as a simple Itinerary.

A great feature is the use of GPS to determine your location. Using this information it can provide information on your nearest tube stations, novel and effective.

In use it proved both quick and stable.  Fire it up and you are immediately presented with the Status page that lists all the tube lines and any issues that affect them such as planned works or delays.  Click on a line and it will provide detailed status information.

Along the bottom is an icon bar that provides fast access to the tube map browser, route planner, departure information and the locate function.  To plan a route simply select your start and destination stations.  The calculated route can be displayed as an interactive map which animates the journey using the tube map or as an itinerary which presents a simplified map showing only the line(s) you need to take with start, destination and intermediate stops.  Simple and effective.

I’m a former resident and a regular visitor to London.  But even after 8yrs living in the City I couldn’t claim to know which routes are optimal between any given stations. So for me this is a very useful tool.

I came across this app a day too late to help during the recent tube strike but as sure as eggs are eggs, there will be more and I’ve seen a number of tweets from TubeDeluxe users who found it helped them locate running services.

If you ever visit London this app will prove very useful and at 59p/99c it is a bargain.