Hello all,
I've been lurking on the site for about a year now, I've recently made an account and decided to post for the first time!
I'm not really sure where I should share this, but I made an Android application to track the T, and figured I would share it with you all. MBTA GPS allow you to see where bus and subway vehicles are in realtime. You can also receive arrival predictions for all subway and bus lines (minus the Green line of course). The link to it is below:
MBTA GPS on the Google Play Store
Congrats on the achievement (I'm a fan of the Transit app and an iPhone guy myself)
How come nobody has the courage to
estimate the Green Line? such as:
Estimating the position of cars based on when they entered their portal? Sure it won't be perfect, but neither are the phantom buses that we see in all the bus apps. And all you'd need is a 25-minute "buffer" somewhere to hold the estimates.
Every time your buffer "saw" a B, C, D, or E enter its southern portal, it would start an estimator that'd expire after 17 minutes, and just estimate its journey northward for at least 'til the timetable would estimate that it is at Park Street? Like this hypothetical B C or D trip?
Portal + .5 min = Kenmore
Portal + 3 min = Hynes
Portal + 6 min = Copley
Portal + 9 min = Arlington
Portal + 12 min = Boylston
Portal + 15 min = Park Street.
Portal + 17 train disappears (since figuring turnbacks is too hard)
Sure, after that it probably gets too crazy. But even such an estimate would be way more useful than nothing.
Similarly, if you see Ds and Es leaving Science Park Inbound, why not estimate where they are the whole way to their exiting their portal?
Portal + 1 min = NS
Portal + 4 min = Haymarket
Portal + 9 min = Park
Portal + 12 min = Arlington
Portal + 15 min = Copley
Portal + 18 min = Hynes
Portal + 21 min = Kenmore
Portal + 24 min = Blandford/StMary/Fenway
Portal + 26 min, the buffer-estimator would expire (and hope to see the live pings resume at portal's exit)
The point is that your computer has more foresight and lookback than most riders.