komyut.online, a free jeepney route planner for Legazpi City

The problem: which jeepney do I take?

The city publishes its jeepney routes as infographics, but a picture of every route doesn't answer the question riders actually have: which jeepney gets me from here to there, where do I get off, and how much will it cost? Anyone new to the city, from students to visitors, ends up asking around or guessing. Riders also lose signal mid-trip, so an app that needs the internet fails exactly when it's needed.

What the jeepney route planner does

Pick where you are and where you're going, by searching for a place or tapping the map, and komyut shows:

• Which jeepney to ride, including trips with up to two transfers.
• Walking directions to the route, between transfers and to your destination, turn by turn on real streets.
• A fare estimate worked out the way the fare matrix works: a base fare for the first 4 km, then a set amount per kilometre, added up for each ride.
• Alternatives, so a cheaper trip with a longer walk isn't hidden behind a faster, pricier one.
• An honest answer when there's no route: if a place is outside the mapped routes, or close enough to walk, it says so.

Jeepney routes on komyut

These Legazpi and Daraga jeepney routes are live in the app today, each checked against how the jeepneys actually run:

• ADLAlternate Daraga-Legazpi
• DDLDiretso Daraga-Legazpi
• DRADaraga-Rawis A
• DRBDaraga-Rawis B
• L1Loop 1
• L2Loop 2

Works offline on budget phones

Most riders use budget Android phones, often in data-saver mode. So the whole app, the map included, loads once and then works with no signal at all. You can also install it on your home screen like an app.

• The map of the Legazpi and Daraga area is a single 3.9 MB file hosted by us, instead of thousands of map images from an outside provider. Some map providers don't allow their maps to be stored on phones for offline use, so hosting our own was the only way to do it properly.
• It draws the map without WebGL2, a graphics feature some older phones lack, so it runs on the phones people actually have.
• When a new version is ready, the app asks before updating instead of swapping files out from under you mid-trip.

Route data we can stand behind

A wrong route that looks official is worse than no route, so komyut only shows routes someone has checked on the ground. The six routes live today were drawn street by street along real roads using OpenStreetMap data.

The City of Legazpi has published a routing plan with more routes. We've imported those as drafts, and each one goes live only after it has been checked against how the jeepneys actually run. Until then they stay out of the app.

Fast route search

Route search uses the same round-by-round approach as professional transit planners: first trips on one jeepney, then trips with one transfer, then two, keeping the best options by time, fare and number of transfers. It runs in the background so the screen never freezes. Tuning it brought the slowest search we measured from 4.6 seconds down to 0.28 seconds.

Running it cheaply and safely

komyut is free to use, so it has to be cheap to run. It's a static site with no backend on a small server in Singapore, the closest region to the Philippines, with files compressed ahead of time so phones download less.

On the first day online, 1,396 of 4,446 requests were bots probing for passwords and secret files. The server now rate-limits traffic, answers those probes with nothing, and bans repeat offenders at the firewall, while real visitors browsing normally never hit a limit.

What's next

• Checking the city's remaining official routes on the ground and adding them to the app.
• Covering more of the places people search for. Some are still outside the mapped routes, and the app says so when they are.
• Adding how often jeepneys come on each route, so trip times can include a realistic wait.

Frequently asked questions