The future came to my neighborhood a few weeks ago when the city’s MTA bus system started reporting each bus’s location over the Internet. Brooklyn residents can now point their browsers to Bustime.mta.info to find out where along a given route the next bus is currently located, and therefore avoid long waits in inclement (or just boring) weather. I take my daughter to school each morning on the B65, and the availability of this information has radically changed the character of our mornings. We’re still rushing out the door to catch the bus — that can’t be helped with kids — but we do so with certainty now, which is a game changer. I know plenty of other cities have had this information for years, but New York’s public sector has lagged so egregiously in technology upgrades like this one that I can hardly believe it’s really a thing now. Next up: eagerly anticipation for whatever clever apps that developers cook up with the Bus Time API.
+