About Kivoon

Why Kivoon exists

If you have ever tried to plan a bus journey on the Isle of Man, you know the pain. You download a PDF timetable from the Bus Vannin website, pinch-zoom on your phone to read rows of tiny numbers, and hope you are looking at the right column for the right day. There is no way to know if your bus is running late. There is no journey planner that connects buses with the steam railway, the Manx Electric Railway, and the Snaefell Mountain Railway. And there is certainly no app that shows you which stops are nearby with live departure times.

Kivoon was built to fix all of that. It is a free public transit companion that covers every bus, train, and tram on the island, with live bus tracking, a multi-modal journey planner, and live departure boards for every stop.

How it works

Under the hood, Kivoon processes official Bus Vannin timetable data and converts it into a GTFS (General Transit Feed Specification) feed - the same open data standard used by Google Maps, Apple Maps, and transit agencies worldwide. This gives us structured, machine-readable schedules for all 50+ bus routes and 850+ stops across the island.

For real-time tracking, when you see a "LIVE" badge next to a departure time, that means Kivoon has up-to-the-minute data on where the bus actually is and can give you an accurate arrival prediction.

The journey planner combines all of this with walking directions and heritage railway timetables to find the best route from A to B, even if it means transferring between a bus and the electric railway.

What Kivoon covers

• Bus Vannin - All 50+ routes operated by the Department of Infrastructure, from the main Douglas to Port Erin corridor to rural services in the north. Live bus tracking on every route.
• Isle of Man Steam Railway - The narrow-gauge heritage railway running from Douglas to Port Erin (does not run year-round), with stops at Castletown, Ballasalla, and Colby.
• Manx Electric Railway - The historic interurban tramway connecting Douglas to Ramsey via Laxey, running along the east coast since 1893.
• Snaefell Mountain Railway - The mountain railway from Laxey to the summit of Snaefell, the highest point on the Isle of Man at 621 metres.

Who built Kivoon

Kivoon was built by Itamar Bareket, a software engineer based on the Isle of Man. After dealing with PDF timetables and guessing at bus stops, he set out to build the transit app the island was missing. The project processes official Bus Vannin timetable data through a custom GTFS pipeline, integrates real-time vehicle positions, and combines it all into a native app designed specifically for Manx public transport.

In the press

Kivoon was featured on 3FM Isle of Man in March 2026. The article covers the development of the app and its goal of making public transport on the island easier to navigate.

Built for the island

Kivoon is not a generic transit app adapted for the Isle of Man. It was designed from scratch specifically for Manx public transport, with local knowledge baked into every feature. We know that Route 1 and Route 2 share the same corridor through Douglas but split at Ballasalla. We know that the heritage railways only run seasonally. We know that finding the right bus at Lord Street can be confusing if you do not know which bay to stand at.

The app is free to download. We use privacy-focused analytics and do not sell your data. Our privacy policy is governed by Isle of Man data protection law.

Get in touch

Have a question, found a bug, or want to suggest a feature? Email us at [email protected]. We read every message.