Tic Toc Transit is an iPhone app for New York City subway riders. It provides timetables for all of the system’s lines; just choose your station and you’re presented with countdowns for the next four trains arriving in a sharp, minimal interface.

I’ve wanted this kind of data for years, and yet this is still not quite what I was hoping for. Tic Toc Transit is only able to provide the official train schedules. That is, it can’t provide accurate, real time, live data reflective of any of the many delays that beset train lines every single day. The fault lies with the Metropolitan Transit Authority, which simply doesn’t provide it, and can’t even collect it, for all I know.

This is symptomatic of the system’s ancient, struggling infrastructure; it’s so sad that it’s 2014 and real-time data in New York City subway tunnels still seems like a pipe dream. There are probably more smartphone carrying riders in the New York City subway than any other un-wired transit system in the world, and yet the system can’t even hope to meet the data needs of that ridership.