Knowing When a Bus Will Arrive

The MTA is looking into using satellite technology to put "real-time arrival information" at bus stops. The Daily News got a hold of a Transit Authority document that said the MTA would want to "expand the system citywide for its fleet of approximately 4,600 buses," but would test a program out with a portion of buses first, focusing ones that come out of the West 126th depot (the M15, M31, M35, M57, M66, M72 and the M116). Gothamist loves this idea: We constantly do the "Is There Bus in the Yonder" - you know, when you peer down the street, to see if there's a bus coming. The News also says, "Officials hope the info screens will do away with the frustrating tendency of having no buses appear for long stretches, then have a few arrive at once," but Gothamist thinks that will only happen if buses do a sort of skip stop - say one bus stops at every other stop while the one right behind it goes to the stops the preceding bus stopped. We'll stop wondering about it, because we know our bus efficiency dreams are crazy talk.

The NYC Transit Riders Council says that though the TA has tried to bring real time electronic message boards before, the city's skyscrapers were interfering with signal transmissions. Now, Gothamist can't wait to for this to come to the subway stations.

Photograph from the high concept remake film of The Honeymooners

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By Jen Chung in News on June 27, 2005 11:37 AM

Comments [rss]

Max

Þu

Mary

Someone mentioned the text messaging thing - Dublin has it for buses, just used it yesterday and it's totally awesome...you just text a number with the bus you need and it sends it right back with the next three departure times. Granted, this is for a much, much smaller system, but still..

toyochin

When I was in San Francisco, I used NextBus to see when the next N-Judah train was coming. I believe NYU buses are equipped with GPS.

Phil

Seattle has a slick Google-Maps-integrated web page tracking their GPS-enabled buses.

http://www.busmonster.com/

Tom

London also has this on their buses in the center of town, like Piccadilly. Really convenient, it'd list the next 3 buses to come and how long each wait was. Farther out in the city the bus stops don't have this however.

Ted

Most subway/tram/bus stations in major German cities already have this. It makes a difference when you know exactly how long you'll have to wait.

sif

rutgers u has had this for years!

whereismybus dot com!

jim

N -

The L line is also the only line that has been updated to something more complex than 1920's era technology. Once the entire system is upgraded, in the year 2050, I'm sure we'll see real time monitoring everywhere. But for the next few decades, we're stuck with what we've got and the switch/relay system probably can't transmit the required info. As far as something that could be built relatively cheaply and at all stations, a time since last train clock is probably the best we can do now.

qns busrider

for us who live in bus-only accessible parts of the city, the satellite technology would be invaluable! when the M60 (from LGA) gets backed up with airline passengers it is often more than 20 minutes between buses. i could take a different bus route if I knew the bus was going to be delayed.

N

Untrue. It's not impossible. I fact, the computer controlled trains such as the L pretty much have this feature ready-to-go when the MTA decides to impliment it.

Think about it. If the computers know where all the trains are, their speed, and route- then they can accurately predict their arrival. Even if it's an approximation, it's better than what we've got now.

jim

To implement this in NYC subways would be impossible. What MTA could do is copy what the DC metro does in a different but much more accurate way. Rather than forecasting how long it will be until a train arrives, show how long it has been since the last train departed. The only complexity here is for the system to know the difference between a "B" train and a "D" train but once that gets figured out riders would have a reasonable idea of how long until another train should show up.

kimberly

It's been a while since my PDX days, but I think Portland, OR has a version of this at their downtown bus stops.

But I have to agree that waiting for the train is way more annoying than waiting for the bus, and yeah, why can't we have a Tube-style system where you know if you have 7 minutes til the next uptown express?

EJ Cory

This weekend in DC we commented on how nice the arrival information screens were in their Metro.

I guess it's probably a lot easier to do when they only have 30 stops or so...

KP

This is pretty cool. But I am still pretty surprised that the MTA hasn't implemented this in the subways like London has for example. I'm much more annoyed waiting for a subway than for a bus. When I'm waiting for a bus, I usually don't have that far to go, and you can always play the walk-along game where you just start walking and glancing back constantly to see if walking to your destination would be faster.

On the subway platform, you just stand there and try to find someone entertaining enough to watch while you try to keep your mind off whether you would have been better off taking a cab.

But still... cool idea. Didn't Seattle or some other city have a text messaging program where you could text your location and it would send back how far away the bus was?