New App helps people to travel across East Lothian

Cabinet Member for Environment, Economic Development and Tourism, John McMillan joined  Andrew Ferguson from SEStran (The South East of Scotland Transport Partnership) and the council’s Active Travel Project Officer, Richard Kerr, to help promote GoSEStran, a new app designed as a one-stop-shop to make travel around East Lothian simpler.  

The app allows you to plan your door-to-door journey around East Lothian (and beyond!) and gives you the various sustainable travel choices available, showing how long each one takes, the likely cost, and even the predicted CO2 emissions. The project is aiming to contribute to the research and knowledge about how to improve the integration and reliability of transport, especially in rural areas. 

Building on both East Lothian’s physical Journey Hub infrastructure, which groups different modes of transport including rail, bus, taxi, car club, community transport and e-bike hire in Musselburgh, and Tactran’s Enable project which developed similar journey planning apps for different projects in Tayside, the GoSEStran mobile app allows users to plan, book and pay for their journey end to end.

Cllr McMillan said: “People can simply tap in their desired destination and planned travel time into the app and then receive not just travel times but also costs comparison and the ability to purchase tickets directly. It also calculates the carbon footprint of your selected journey and can offer active travel suggestions such as walking or cycling routes. I’m sure this will appeal not just to residents of East Lothian but also to visitors keen to explore the county and plan their journey.”

Councillor Colin Davidson, the Chair of SEStran, said: 'People are looking for smart ways of planning their journey in a way that doesn't impact the planet. We hope this app will come in handy as a one stop shop for all means of getting from A to B in the region.'

The App is available on Google Play and Apple App Store and the developers would appreciate customer feedback to allow them to further improve the customer experience (see under the 'more' link in bottom of the app homepage).

Watch out for the addition of new modes on the app, including a new demand responsive bus route in East Lothian, which will be advertised via the GoSEStran app! 

SEStran, the regional transport partnership for South-East Scotland, has developed the GOSEStran app in partnership with East Lothian Council, Tactran (the regional transport partnership for the Tayside area, where similar apps are already being used) and Fuse Mobility Ltd, a technology provider. The project is funded via Transport Scotland's MaaS (Mobility as a Service) Investment Fund