App Turns Gothenburg Tram Ride Into A Sightseeing Tour

Guided tours are expensive and do not let you discover places at your own pace. Design agency Forsman & Bodenfors created the app Tram Sightseeing for Västtrafik, the public transportation company in Gothenburg, Sweden.

The app directs you to the nearest tram stop with GPS navigation and lets you begin a 45-minute city tour. Users are notified by audio (headphones please!) during the tour when they are near to a geotagged landmark. In addition, the app shows where and where to transfer trams, thanks to its real-time tram traffic indications.

A real guided tour is usually much more interesting than an audio tour, but this app is an interesting alternative for those who like doing things at their own pace and ‘mixing with the locals’.

Hopefully this kind of unobtrusive tourism will soon emerge in other cities — and for those who have underground system where the GPS doesn’t reach, I can imagine this system being adapted to other means of transportations such as buses, tuk-tuks and piggy-back.