How MTA shut down my app for Penn Station commuters • Hacker News Board

Re: How MTA shut down my app for Penn Station commuters

#101

Post by rockostrich » Wed, Jul 12, 2017, 8:28 PM UTC

vonmoltke wrote: post #96

Manozco wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that (correct me if I'm wrong), the platform is displayed 10 minutes before the train arrives, so there is already people waiting when the train arrives

It is displayed 10 minutes before the to train leaves . If a train is being turned over it will have already arrived and unloaded at that point.

In my experience after commuting for a few months, this is never the case. Even when the track listing is displayed 10 minutes prior to departure time, the train usually won't arrive for another few minutes. You get crowds of people where the doors will be. It's really not safe, although I've never seen someone fall so it can't be that bad.

Re: How MTA shut down my app for Penn Station commuters

#102

Post by troisx » Wed, Jul 12, 2017, 9:53 PM UTC

Why don't you sue them? It's a government agency, and I believe that the data should be available under New York's public records laws (I only have limited experience with NY's laws and IANAL). From personal experience, being nice to a government agency never got me anywhere, but our lawyer has a 95% win rate against them.

Re: How MTA shut down my app for Penn Station commuters

#103

Post by troisx » Wed, Jul 12, 2017, 9:56 PM UTC

rocky1138 wrote: post #13

Whoever decided to close his access to the API should be fired.

Sad to see you downvoted. I believe that government employees who actively prevent access to publicly-owned data should be fired immediately.

Re: How MTA shut down my app for Penn Station commuters

#104

Post by londons_explore » Wed, Jul 12, 2017, 9:59 PM UTC

Why would you want to know the train more than 10 minutes before departure? Surely you'd just get on the immediate next train?

Are tickets only for a specific time of train?

Or are trains less frequent than every 10 minutes?

Re: How MTA shut down my app for Penn Station commuters

#105

Post by wfisher » Wed, Jul 12, 2017, 10:56 PM UTC

www.njtwizard.com

We do this for NJ Transit with about 90% accuracy. We spent at least two months figuring out how it all works, though. It's non-trivial to do right.

Re: How MTA shut down my app for Penn Station commuters

#106

Post by bayyar » Wed, Jul 12, 2017, 11:00 PM UTC

wfisher wrote: post #105

www.njtwizard.com We do this for NJ Transit with about 90% accuracy. We spent at least two months figuring out how it all works, though. It's non-trivial to do right.

How do you do it?

Re: How MTA shut down my app for Penn Station commuters

#107

Post by norikki » Thu, Jul 13, 2017, 12:39 AM UTC

candiodari wrote: post #60

CPLX wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more serious than that even, it's a safety issue. The platforms are fairly narrow and have no railings, and they aren't designed to hold two full train loads of people at the same time. If a full train pulls up and the platform is already full people are going to end up on the tracks. I haven't seen this at Penn but I have seen the issue happen in the subway when there are train delays. When this happens the MTA…

So what you mean to say, with safety issue, is that government-provided infrastructure is so badly designed and ill-equipped to be used at the necessary scale attempts to improve matters must be stopped !

This app is a classic tragedy of the commoms. If everyone used the app, it would be worse for everyone.

Re: How MTA shut down my app for Penn Station commuters

#108

Post by norikki » Thu, Jul 13, 2017, 12:43 AM UTC

throwaway20148 wrote: post #73

eveningcoffee wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is also dehumanizing.

Following some rules is dehumanizing?

The fact that they dont have more platforms and more trains is dehumanizing because it causes overcrowding.

Re: How MTA shut down my app for Penn Station commuters

#109

Post by phonon » Thu, Jul 13, 2017, 1:00 AM UTC

troisx wrote: post #102

Why don't you sue them? It's a government agency, and I believe that the data should be available under New York's public records laws (I only have limited experience with NY's laws and IANAL). From personal experience, being nice to a government agency never got me anywhere, but our lawyer has a 95% win rate against them.

There is no law that NY government information has to be available through a realtime API.

Re: How MTA shut down my app for Penn Station commuters

#110

Post by Pyxl101 » Thu, Jul 13, 2017, 2:09 AM UTC

zavulon wrote: post #99

midnitewarrior wrote: post #10

Why didn't he switch to a crowd-sourced data model like GasBuddy?

See my comment above - it would require a significant effort to get off the ground, as the app without data would not be useful to first users, and without the data provided by those first users, it wouldn't be useful to others.

They already had an app and users. They could have extended it with this functionality.