A few quick notes on BusTime: The MTA’s in-house real-time bus tracking system is making its debut in bits and spurts. With Staten Island and the B63 on board and the Bronx on tap for later this year, Transit has unveiled the service on a few other routes. Manhattan’s M34 and M34SBS buses are now available on BusTime. This route had been the subject of an earlier, much more expensive tracking pilot, and the MTA switched over to the in-house solution earlier this week. On the downside, the bus countdown clocks along 34th St. are no longer in use.
Meanwhile, in Brooklyn, with word that the Smith-9th Sts. renovation will take nearly six months longer than anticipated, the MTA will introduce BusTime to the B61 in June. This bus — the only one serving Red Hook — helps alleviate the lack of nearby subway service, and Transit says they readied these buses ahead of schedule to help stranded straphangers adjust their travel schedules.
Finally, BusTime will take center stage at my next Transit Museum Problem Solvers event. Michael Frumin who has spearheaded the BusTime effort will be my guest. He’ll be on hand to discuss how BusTime can help with the problem of declining bus ridership throughout the city. It’s set for Wednesday, April 25 at 6:30 p.m. at the Transit Museum. Save the date.
4 comments
I wonder if those countdown clocks on 34th could be reactivated with the new system.
Sure they could. It’s just display of information that’s already available. Maybe the MTA could host a “hack” contest to hook these back up.
Ultimately I do believe that major bus stations should have arrival time in a non-mobile format.
That seems the easiest to do. Just have a streaming banner displaying bus location information.
What’s the relationship between MTA’s ‘bustime’ and nextbus?