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"New York City subway riders finally have an official high-tech option to figure out when their train is coming.\nThe Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), the government body that oversees buses and subways for the city, released a free app Friday that provides real-time estimates of train arrivals so riders can better plan out when to show up at the station. The app is called Subway Time and is currently only available on the iPhone, though there are plans to release it on other platforms in the future.\nOther third-party apps like NextStop and NYC Mate also provide subway arrival time estimates for New York City, but the new Subway Time app has the potential to be more accurate and useful by relying on the MTA's signal data for train arrivals. \nAccording to the Wall Street Journal, the MTA has spent $228 million over 11 years installing advanced signals on select train lines, which can be used to provide minute-by-minute updates on a train's location. As a result, the app is limited to just showing train times for the red and green subway lines as well as the Grand Central-Times Square shuttle, though there are plans to add the L train in the next 6-12 months and the 7 train by 2016.\n\nWhile the data being fed into the app may be better than competing subway apps, the design could use some work. Rather than start by asking users to pick out a station from the subway map to see upcoming trains, as other subways apps do, Subway Time asks the user to start by picking out a single train line. That might sound like a small difference, but it makes it much harder to gauge arrival times for multiple train lines coming through the same station.\nThe other big limitation is the app will only work when there is an Internet connection, which means it is really only useful at above ground stations and the limited handful of stations that have WiFi. However, an MTA rep pointed out to Mashable that each of the stations along these subway lines already has displays showing estimated arrival times, so the app isn't necessarily needed underground. That said, it would still be useful to have access to real-time information through the app when planning out whether and when to transfer to different lines along your trip.\nStill, if you happen to live off one of the lines already featured in the app, it's certainly worth a download. It may not make up for the recent subway fare increase, but at least it's something. \nImages courtesy of Flickr, maxintosh and MTA. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2012/12/28/mta-subway-time-app/>