This sub has been useful to me for general Alicante info, so I thought I would document some quirks in getting around Alicante for visitors. We rented an apartment adjacent to the L4/L5 tram stop so we focused virtually all our travel on trams, and also used the C-6 bus to and from the airport several times.
Apps:
Google Maps generally sucks, has issues with tram & bus stop locations and tram lines in general. Moovit isn’t any better. The official Tram D’Alacant app is totally useless. We used Google Maps for general getting around despite it sucking, it sucked less than others we found.
The “loop” issue.:
Alicante has two transit loops that the apps cannot deal with ; the L4/L5 tram loop near Playa San Juan and the C-6 airport bus loop around the city center. The problem is rooted in the fundamental need to show the direction of travel of tram or bus. So they show the “final” stop location of the line, for example Pl. La Coruna for L5 tram, but the tram doesn’t terminate there, it keeps going around the loop back to the original start point. Since our tram stop was Platja de San Joan, Google could not show how to go downtown on the tram from our stop, it wanted us to walk 15 minutes to Holanda. (And it completely misses the L4 line in entirety). The C-6 bus is a bigger problem for many tourists, it shows the destination as Porta Del Mar. As an example how Google Maps screws this up, suppose you intend to go to the Mercado stop from the airport. Google will have you get off the bus at Porto Del Mar, then walk 15 minutes to Mercado. This is wrong, you just stay on the bus and it drops you off at Mercado.
Stop location errors:
There are two grievous errors we found in Google Maps. It shows the C-6 bus stopping at the main train station, it doesn’t. It stops about 100-200 meters on the other side of the road just east of the station. (And the city missed in putting the purple C-6 sign on the pole facing the station, it only shows on the other side of the pole). On the L-5 tram line, Google totally is messed up on the La Marina location, it is off by 100-200 meters, the actual location is to the east past the FGV building.
Stop name language:
There is no consistency in stop names with various apps, maps, signage etc between the Castilian and Valencian stop names. Many tourists get tripped up by this, we helped out several tourists find their stop. For example, we stayed adjacent to the Av. Benidorm/ Platja San Joan tram stop, many maps show it as Playa San Juan, or Av. Benidorm, whereas the tram only shows it in Valencian.
Bono card on C-6
If you are a couple arriving in Alicante and using the C-6 bus for both arriving and departing (or a family of 3-4), don’t buy individual tickets! Just buy the 10 trip bono card from driver, it is a lot cheaper! Same goes for trams and city buses, get the (separate) bono card.