Rules of Use
General provisions
1.1 What these Rules are
1.1Purpose and scope
These Rules govern the use of Vapio (the "Service"), a public transport application. They apply to every person who installs, opens or otherwise uses the Service, whether or not that person has created an account.
1.2Definitions
"User" means any person using the Service. "Account" means a sign-in created with an email address or a third-party sign-in provider. "Device" means one installation of the Service on one phone or tablet. "Content" means anything a User sends to us through the Service, including feedback messages and photographs. "Response" means any measure taken under Chapter 7 where these Rules have been broken.
1.3Acceptance
Using the Service means accepting these Rules and the Privacy Policy. A User who does not accept them must stop using the Service and may delete their account at any time from within the app. Continued use after a change to these Rules means acceptance of the changed version.
1.7The spirit of these Rules
Vapio exists so that a person standing at a stop can know what is actually coming. Everything in these Rules follows from that: we ask Users not to do things that make the information less trustworthy, that make the Service less available to others, or that put at risk the relationships with transport operators on which the information depends. Where a provision is capable of more than one reading, the reading that serves that purpose is the right one.
1.2 How they apply
1.4Changes to these Rules
We may change these Rules at any time. The version published at the Service's public address is the version in force. Where a change materially reduces a User's rights, we will announce it in the app before it takes effect.
1.5Changes to these Rules
We may change these Rules. A change takes effect when the revised text is published at the address where these Rules are kept. Where a change materially narrows what a User may do, we give notice inside the Service before it takes effect. Continuing to use the Service after that is acceptance of the revised text.
1.6Who may use the Service
The Service is offered to individuals. A person who is not old enough under the law of their country of residence to agree to terms of this kind should use the Service only with the involvement of a parent or guardian, who then accepts these Rules on that person's behalf.
1.8Relationship with other documents
These Rules sit alongside the Privacy Policy, which describes what we collect and why. Where the two overlap, the Privacy Policy governs matters of personal data and these Rules govern matters of conduct. Neither displaces rights a User has under the mandatory consumer law of their country of residence.
Accounts and identity
2.1 Creating an account
2.5Accuracy
What a User tells us when creating an account should be true. An email address given for verification should be one the User controls. We do not ask for more than we need, and we ask that what little we do ask for is given honestly.
2.2 One person, one account
2.1One person, one account
A User may hold one Account. Creating additional Accounts in order to obtain more of a limited resource, to escape a measure taken under Chapter 7, or to give the appearance of being more than one person runs against the principle that an account belongs to a person.
2.3Impersonation
Presenting oneself as another person, as a transport operator, as a public authority, or as the Vapio team is prohibited.
2.6Devices and sessions
An account is signed in on one device at a time. Signing in on a second device ends the session on the first, and the first device is told that this has happened, when, and from what kind of device. This is a deliberate design: it keeps an account traceable to a person rather than to a crowd.
2.7Sharing
An account is personal. Passing account access to another person, or using an account that belongs to someone else, is not permitted, however informal the arrangement and whatever the reason.
2.3 Keeping an account secure
2.2Account security
A User is responsible for keeping their sign-in address and verification codes to themselves. We will never ask for a verification code by message, email or telephone.
2.8Recovery
Where an account is linked to a verified email address, access can be recovered through that address. Where it is not, we may be unable to help. A User who believes their account has been used by someone else should say so through the feedback channel.
2.4 Leaving
2.4Working around a measure
Reinstalling the Service, resetting a device identifier, creating a new Account, or using another person's device in order to escape a measure taken under Chapter 7 is itself a breach of these Rules, and is treated as a more serious one than whatever led to the original measure.
2.9Closing an account
A User may close their account from within the Service at any time and without giving a reason. Closing an account removes the account and the data held against it. It does not, by itself, end any restriction that was in force at the time, and it does not oblige us to accept a new account from the same person where one was previously restricted.
Acceptable use
3.1 General principles
3.4Falsified location
Reporting a location that is not the device's actual location, including through a mock-location tool, is prohibited where it affects data we publish to other Users.
3.5Resale and commercial redistribution
Selling, sublicensing, or redistributing data obtained from the Service as a product or service of your own is prohibited without our written permission. Data originating from public transport operators remains subject to their own terms.
3.10Consideration for other Users
The Service is shared. Conduct that makes it worse for others — occupying channels meant for reports, degrading shared capacity, or directing anything at another person that would be unwelcome in a public place — has no place in it.
3.11Lawful use
The Service must not be used for a purpose that is unlawful under the law of the User's country of residence or under the law of the Republic of Türkiye, and must not be used to help another person do something unlawful.
3.12Commercial use
Personal travel, including travel for work, is ordinary use. Building a product or a paid service on top of the Service, or using it to supply information to third parties commercially, requires our agreement in writing.
3.2 Automated access
3.1Automated access and scraping
The Service is for personal use by a human being. Automated querying, bulk downloading, mirroring, or any use whose volume or pattern is not consistent with one person planning journeys is prohibited.
3.6Reasonable load
The Service is sized for people using it to travel. Requests at a rate no person could produce, or patterns designed to enumerate the network rather than to make a journey, place a cost on everyone else and on the operators whose systems sit behind ours.
3.7Copying and redistribution
Timetables, stop positions and route geometry reach the Service from public sources and are the subject of separate licences, which Chapter 10 records. Taking what the Service assembles and republishing it as a dataset or as a competing service is outside what these Rules permit, whatever the technical means used to obtain it.
3.3 The client and its integrity
3.2Modified clients and reverse engineering
Using a modified build of the Service, repackaging it, redistributing it, or circumventing any client-side check is prohibited. This includes bypassing measures that restrict a feature for a particular User.
3.8Security research
We welcome being told about weaknesses. A person who finds one is asked to report it through the feedback channel and to give us a reasonable opportunity to fix it before telling anyone else. Testing that degrades the Service for other Users, or that reaches other people's data, is not research and is not covered by this Article.
3.9Circumvention
Measures that limit what an account or a device may do exist for a reason and are part of the Service. Working around them, or helping another person to work around them, is a breach of these Rules independent of whatever else was being attempted.
3.4 Interference
3.3Interfering with the Service
Load testing, denial-of-service, or probing for weaknesses without written permission degrade the Service for everyone else and are not permitted. Article 3.8 sets out the way to tell us about a weakness in good faith, and conduct that follows it is not treated as a breach.
Content and feedback
4.1 What feedback is for
4.1What feedback is for
The feedback channel is for reporting problems with the Service and with transport data. It is not a general messaging service.
4.3Spam and flooding
Repeated identical messages, advertising, and sending at a volume that obstructs our ability to answer other Users are prohibited.
4.6Accuracy in reports
A report is most useful when it says what was seen, where and when. Deliberately false reports — a vehicle that was not there, a stop that was not closed — cost us the time we would otherwise spend on real problems and can send other Users to the wrong place.
4.2 Standards for content
4.2Abuse, harassment and hateful content
Threats, harassment, sexual content involving minors, and content attacking a person or a group on the basis of ethnicity, religion, nationality, disability, sex, sexual orientation or gender identity are prohibited. This Article admits no warning step.
4.4False reports
Knowingly reporting a vehicle, a stop or a disruption that does not exist is prohibited. Being mistaken is not a breach; this Article requires knowledge.
4.5Rights in Content you send
You keep ownership of the Content you send. You grant us a non-exclusive licence to store and use it for the purpose of operating and improving the Service. You confirm that you have the right to send it, including any photograph.
4.7Other people's information
Reports should not contain another person's name, contact details, face or vehicle registration unless that information is genuinely necessary to explain the problem. Where it is not necessary, we may remove it.
4.3 Attachments
4.8What attachments help with
A screenshot of what the Service showed, or a short clip of the street, usually settles in seconds a question that would otherwise take several exchanges. Attachments are read by a person and are kept with the report.
4.9What attachments should not contain
Attachments should not contain images of people who have not agreed to be photographed, documents belonging to other people, or anything a User would not be willing to have read by a stranger. Nothing in an attachment is published, but everything in one is read.
4.4 How we handle what you send
4.10How reports are handled
Reports are read by people. We answer inside the Service, in the same conversation. We may close a conversation once it is resolved, and we may keep the record of it so that a later report can be understood in context.
4.11Rights in what you send
A User keeps ownership of what they write and of the images they attach. By sending them, a User gives us permission to store them, to read them, and to use what they show in order to correct the data behind the Service. We do not publish them and we do not pass them to third parties for their own purposes.
Data and privacy
5.1 What we collect
5.1What we collect
What we collect, why, how long we keep it and who it is shared with is set out in the Privacy Policy, which forms part of these Rules.
5.4Location
The Service asks for location so that it can show what is near. Location is used on the device to choose stops and to centre the map, and coordinates are sent to our servers only to ask what is arriving at a given point. Location is not kept as a history, and a User who declines it can still use the map, the lines, the timetables and journey planning.
5.5Diagnostics
When the Service fails in a way we can detect, we record what failed and the version it failed on. We do this to fix it. We do not record what a User searched for or where they went in order to build a picture of that person.
5.2 What stays on your phone
5.2Your data, your decision
A User may delete their account from within the Service at any time. Deleting an account does not by itself end a measure taken under Chapter 7 that is still in force, and does not erase the records we are required to keep in order to apply these Rules.
5.6What stays on the device
Saved places, saved journeys, favourite lines and recent searches are held on the device. Where a User signs in, a copy is kept against the account so that the same things are there on a new phone. Where a User does not sign in, they never leave the device at all.
5.7Account data
An account holds an email address or a sign-in identifier, the language and version the Service was last used in, and the small set of preferences described in Article 5.6. It does not hold a travel history.
5.3 Your choices
5.3Location
Journey planning and the map run on your device. Your precise location is not required to use the Service and is not stored on our servers as a history of where you have been.
5.8Deletion
A User may delete their account and its data from within the Service. Deletion is immediate and is not reversible. Records we are required to keep in order to enforce these Rules — for instance that a particular account was restricted — may be retained for as long as that purpose lasts.
The service itself
6.1 Availability
6.1Transport data is an estimate
Arrival times, vehicle positions and disruption notices are estimates built from data published by transport operators and from our own models. They can be wrong, late or missing. Do not rely on them where being wrong would be dangerous or costly.
6.7Use without a connection
The network, the timetables and journey planning work on the device and remain available without a connection. Live vehicles, arrival predictions and service announcements require one. This division is deliberate: the things a person needs underground should not depend on a signal.
6.2 The nature of live data
6.2Availability and change
The Service is provided as it is. We may change, suspend or withdraw any part of it, including a feature you rely on. We do not promise uninterrupted availability.
6.4Live data is an estimate
Vehicle positions reach us from the operators, at the interval the operators publish them and with the accuracy the operators achieve. What the Service shows is the best reconstruction we can make of where a vehicle is now from where it was a short time ago. It is a very good estimate. It is not a measurement, and it should not be treated as one.
6.5Arrival times
An arrival time is a prediction. It is built from live positions where we have them and from the timetable where we do not, and it is affected by traffic, by weather and by events on the street that no model sees. Users should leave themselves a margin, particularly for a connection that cannot be missed.
6.6Planned journeys
A suggested journey is one reasonable way to travel, chosen from many. It is not advice that a particular vehicle will be running, that a particular interchange will be step-free, or that a service will not be diverted after the journey was planned.
6.3 Changes to the Service
6.3Third-party sources
Some data comes from public transport operators and other third parties. We do not control it and are not responsible for its accuracy. Their terms may also apply to you.
6.8Versions
We support the current version of the Service and, for a period, the versions immediately before it. Where a version is too old to work correctly against our servers, the Service will say so and ask for an update rather than behave unpredictably.
6.9Features under development
Some features are offered while still being worked on and are marked as such. They may change or be withdrawn. Nothing in these Rules obliges us to keep a feature that is not working.
Enforcement
7.1 Principles
7.4Appeal
A User may appeal once, in writing, through the feedback channel, or by email where the feedback channel is itself suspended. We will answer. Our answer to an appeal is final.
7.5Proportionality
A response is measured against what happened, not against what might have happened. Where a lighter response will meet the case, it is the one we use. Where conduct was a mistake and is put right once raised, that is usually the end of it.
7.7Repetition
Conduct that has already been raised with a User and then continues is treated more seriously than the same conduct occurring once. A person who has been told and has not stopped has made a choice, and that choice is part of the picture.
7.2 Procedure
7.1Consequences of a breach
Conduct that breaks these Rules is answered in a way that fits what happened. Depending on the seriousness of the breach, on the harm done to other Users or to our relationship with a transport operator, and on whether the conduct is repeated, a response may range from drawing the conduct to the User's attention through to a restriction on the use of the Service. A response may run for a stated period and end by itself, or it may continue until we decide otherwise. A User who is subject to a response is always told so directly, together with the Article concerned.
7.2How a response is chosen
In deciding how to respond we weigh the Article that was broken, the harm that followed, whether the conduct was deliberate, whether it continued after being raised with the User, and whether the User has acted to put it right. Conduct that endangers the safety of other people, that is directed at another person, or that is aimed at the integrity of the Service itself is treated as serious from the first occasion.
7.6Records
We keep a record of the Article concerned, the response, the date and the reason. The record exists so that a later decision about the same person is taken in context rather than from nothing.
7.8Ending by itself
Where a response is stated to run for a period, it ends when that period ends, without the User having to ask and without anyone having to act. There is no step in which a person must request restoration of something that was always going to be restored.
7.3 Review
7.3Notice
A User who is subject to a response under this Chapter is told which Article is concerned, what the response affects, and how long it is expected to last. Where it is not limited in time, that is stated. The notice is given inside the Service so that it reaches the person it concerns and no one else.
Supplementary provisions
8.1 Interpretation
8.1General clause
Conduct that is not described by any other Article, but that damages the Service, damages other Users, damages our relationship with a transport operator, or defeats the purpose stated in Article 1.7, is a breach of this Article. Where this Article is relied on, the response is measured by reference to the Article that the conduct most closely resembles.
8.2Interpretation
Vapio interprets these Rules. Where an Article is capable of more than one reading, the reading that serves the purpose stated in Article 1.1 prevails. This Article does not remove any right you have under the mandatory consumer law of your country of residence.
8.4Severability and waiver
If an Article is unenforceable, the rest remain in force. Not enforcing an Article on one occasion does not waive it.
8.6Whole agreement
These Rules, together with the Privacy Policy, are the whole of what is agreed between a User and us about the use of the Service, and replace anything said before.
8.7Transfer
A User may not transfer their rights under these Rules to another person. We may transfer ours to a successor that takes on the Service, on terms no less favourable to Users.
8.2 Language and form
8.3Language
These Rules are published in several languages. The English text is the authoritative one; where a translation differs from it, the English text prevails. Please tell us about a translation error through the feedback channel.
8.5Headings
Chapter and section headings are there to help a reader find a provision. They do not affect the meaning of the Articles beneath them.
Intellectual property
9.1 Our rights
9.1The Service
The Service — its software, its design, its icons, its written text and the name Vapio — belongs to us. Nothing in these Rules transfers any of it to a User. Permission to use the Service is a permission to use it, not a transfer of what it is made of.
9.2Our name
The name Vapio and the mark that goes with it may not be used to describe another product, to suggest a connection that does not exist, or in a way that would lead a reasonable person to think a third party's work is ours.
9.3The route network
The way the Service assembles a network — how patterns are chosen, how route geometry is threaded onto stops, how arrival times are estimated — is our work, even where the underlying timetable is public. Chapter 10 records where the underlying data comes from.
9.6Open-source components
The Service is built partly from open-source components, each under its own licence. Those licences continue to apply to those components and nothing in these Rules narrows them. The list is available inside the Service.
9.2 Your rights
9.4What a User may do
A User may take screenshots, share them, and write about the Service. A User may quote what the Service shows in a post, an article or a complaint to an operator. None of that needs our permission.
9.5Feedback and ideas
Where a User suggests an improvement, we may act on it without owing anything in return. This is not a claim over the User's idea; it is the plain consequence of offering it. A User who wants different terms should say so before sending the suggestion.
Sources and third parties
10.1 Transport data
10.1Public transport data
Stops, routes, timetables and the traffic measurements behind the congestion model come from the open data published by İstanbul Büyükşehir Belediyesi and İETT. We are grateful for it. We are not affiliated with either body, and neither endorses the Service.
10.2Live vehicle positions
Live positions are obtained from the operator at the cadence the operator publishes. Where positions are not available for a line, the Service says so rather than filling the gap with the timetable and presenting the result as live.
10.3Accuracy of source data
Where the source data is wrong — a stop in the wrong place, a line that has been renumbered, a service that no longer runs — the Service will be wrong in the same way until the source is corrected or we correct it by hand. Reports of such errors are welcome and are acted on.
10.2 Maps and other services
10.4Maps
Base maps are supplied by third parties under their own terms, which a User also accepts by using the Service. The stops, lines and vehicles drawn on top of the base map are ours.
10.5Links out
Where the Service opens something outside it — a web page, an operator's site — what happens there is governed by that place's own terms, not by these Rules.
Travelling with Vapio
11.1 On the street
11.1Attention on the street
A phone is not a substitute for looking. Users should not read the Service while crossing a road, while cycling, or while driving. Where a journey is being followed, the information will still be there when it is safe to look at it.
11.2Signs and staff
Where what the Service shows differs from a sign at the stop or from what staff say, the sign and the staff are right. They can see the disruption that has not reached any feed yet.
11.3Safety and the operator's rules
Using the Service does not change the rules of the vehicle or the station a User is in. Operators' safety instructions take precedence over anything the Service shows.
11.2 Fares and tickets
11.4Fares
Fare figures shown in the Service are given for orientation and are the published figures as we understood them at the time. They do not form part of any contract of carriage, they are not affected by a User's own card or concession, and the operator's figure is the one that applies.
11.5Tickets
The Service does not sell tickets and cannot validate one. A journey it suggests may cross operators or fare zones in a way that affects the price.
11.3 Accessibility
11.6Accessibility information
Where the Service records that an interchange is step-free, that record comes from the source data and can be out of date — a lift out of service is not something a timetable knows. Users who depend on it should confirm with the operator.
11.7Reporting what you find
A stop that has moved, a lift that has been out for a week, a line that no longer runs: these reach us fastest from the people standing in front of them. Reports of this kind are the single most useful thing a User can send.
Final provisions
12.1 Contact and changes
12.1Contact
The feedback channel inside the Service is the way to reach us. It is read by people and it is answered in the same place.
12.2Notices to Users
Where these Rules require that a User be told something, telling them inside the Service is sufficient, and is the method we prefer: it reaches the person concerned and no one else.
12.2 Closing
12.3Governing law
These Rules are governed by the law of the Republic of Türkiye, without prejudice to any mandatory protection a User enjoys under the law of their own country of residence.
12.4Survival
Chapters 9 and 12, and any Article whose sense requires it, continue to apply after a User stops using the Service.
12.5In closing
These Rules are long because they try to be precise. What they come down to is short: use the Service to travel, do not make it worse for anyone else, and tell us when it is wrong.