After a few false hopes focusing around the MTA’s communication gap, how, we’re talkin’. Just two days after the MTA announced the new Know Before You Go! program, New York City Transit has unveiled a mobile version of its popular trip planner site. This mobile version, which is available online at http://tripplanner.mta.info/mobile/ and still in beta, comes with an added bonus: real-time service alerts.
The new Trip Planner, first reported byNY1’s Bobby Cuza last week and officially announced yesterday by NYCT, allows riders with PDA’s or web-enabled cell phones to tap into the MTA’s trip planner system. While on the go, a rider can choose from any combination of local buses and subways and express buses to get from point A to point B. The service includes handicapped access information and offers users a variety of itineraries. Much like those old Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books, t’s up to you to pick the right one.
NYCT VP for Corporate Communications Paul Fleuranges expounded on the popularity of this service. “Every day more than 5,000 customers plan their trips using our on-line service,” he said in a press release, “and we expect that number will grow now that users don’t have to be sitting at a desk top in order to tap into the Trip Planner data base.”
But the best part as far as I’m concerned is the service alert information. As I’ve mentioned over and over again, the massive problems in August originated from the lack of communications between the MTA, its employees and riders. But the new service will offer real-time service alerts for unplanned service delays and changes. That is, in a word, fantastic news for riders who often feel stranded at subway stations and confused by MTA employees who, for example, may be found telling people to travel three stops in the wrong direction instead of walking five blocks to the nearest express stop when local service is unexpectedly out.
According to NYCT’s Internet Technology Group, this service should work on most WAP-enabled phones. “A majority of all smart phones – those that are browser enabled, and PDA’s, all of which are browser enabled – can support the application, which does not use a lot of Mobile device memory,” Sohaib Mallick, senior director of NYC Transit’s Internet Technologies group, said.
For his part, Fleuranges said that NYCT is rather excited to be offering the service and decided to offer it even as a program still in development so that riders could enjoy the new system. “Neither President Roberts nor I could see withholding the application from our riders given that it could provide them with system status information,” he said to me in an e-mail. “In a nutshell, it is a start. Does it solve the problem entirely? I’ll be the first to admit it doesn’t. But again, it is a start.”
It’s a start I can wholeheartedly support. Now that we can access this information while on the go, the next step — and I’m confident we’ll see it sooner rather than later — is a text message alert system that doesn’t require riders to actively search out service alerts. But for now, let’s celebrate this step forward.