111–120 of 120 posts
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?
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It sounds like The API changed. But same sentiment -- that was a shit design decision.
It sounds like locking down the API was an entirely deliberate decision made at the same time as removing platform data from the website, which means Chesterton's fence[0] applies - we should work out why that decision was made before criticising it. Discussion upthread is about commuters being pushed onto the tracks, which sounds like a good reason not to display data that isn't 100% certain. [0] https://en.m.wikipe…
(Also, on reflection, "Chesterton's Fence" is an unnecessarily complicated and overly verbose way of saying: "The MTA probably has a reason for the change.")
Would have been interesting to see if you could reliably crowd-source the data from commuters themselves.
Thank you! I definitely considered doing something like that, however — the amount of work required to crowd source the data would be significant. There would be a “chicken & egg” problem — the app wouldn’t be useful to first users, and without the first users, there wouldn’t be enough data to make it useful for everyone else — so this would require a fairly large marketing campaign to get off the ground. But — one d…
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But there are lots of trains leaving at any given time going to different places. There's no way to know which train somebody is heading to without asking them.
There aren't that many leaving simultaneously - plus they tend to be slotted into the same group of platforms.
As somebody who commuted for a long time at peak rush hour back and forth from Penn Station to D.C., I can tell you that following people who "seem to know where they're going" would not be a reliable strategy.
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Have you ever taken a rush hour train at Penn Station? The alternative (i.e. current system) is everyone congregates on the concourse staring at the platform screens, and when a new one pops up hundreds of people flood in the direction of that platform in a mad dash. It's a mess.
It is exactly this alternative(the current system) that the Amtrak/MTA/LIRR prefer for safety reasons. Amtrak which also has the same procedure at Penn states this here: http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/07/17/amtrak_s_unpe... Although it is indeed inefficient and the MTA is completely inept, the platforms for LIRR trains are very narrow, they are shared by two trains and the escalators to get up to the main f…
I certainly don't support cutting pensions or wages whicg means money needs to come in and Albany consistently constrains the MTA's budget requests and needs. There's probably waste but this alternative is ridiculous and Cuomo's billion is a drop in the bucket. We should probably be realistic as a nation and invest a trillion dollars in the system.
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I'd imagine that placing a "homemade" electronic device in a densely-populated, public space is going to attract a lot of unwanted attention.
From all those military guards that parade up and down the station
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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 !
As an interesting, although unrelated aside: platform data is available in the UK's National Rail's feeds, but the terms and conditions[1] explicitly prohibit displaying platform numbers early, as mentioned in their developer guidelines[2]. I guess the wording doesn't technically ban you from displaying historical platform information, but that would likely be a bad-faith use of the data anyway... [1] http://www.nati…
UK rail data is quite open in comparison to this story, for instance check out these live track diagrams (of London Waterloo & many other areas) which show real-time movements of trains. This is how I often find out the platform numbers prior to travel and I also get information before staff during disruption. http://www.opentraintimes.com/maps/signalling/wat#T_WAT
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> It's terrible for humanity. It's stagnant, it kills creativity Your other points may be valid but I'm not so sure about this one. Artists tend to cluster in big cities, often with mass transit (and sometimes without, like LA). I sincerely doubt there's any sort of correlation between mass transit and creativity.
Mediocre artists cluster. Good artists hermit. Great artists do both - But don't maintain city apartments.
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UK rail data is quite open in comparison to this story, for instance check out these live track diagrams (of London Waterloo & many other areas) which show real-time movements of trains. This is how I often find out the platform numbers prior to travel and I also get information before staff during disruption. http://www.opentraintimes.com/maps/signalling/wat#T_WAT
There are maps of many more routes at traksy https://traksy.uk/live/M+2+CARLILE