3 ms·

You can see bus locations on the individual bus route pages, for example: https://www.mbta.com/schedules/741/line https://www.mbta.com/schedules/741/line

by vcryan 8y ago

bsder 8y ago
They commented that they just started rolling it out this week. The problem is that they should have spent 0% of their time on prediction and 100% of their time on actual tracking. Once you have tracking, prediction pretty much comes along for the ride.
- fastball 8y ago
  Not really. Just tracking the location in an app isn't going to tell you anything about traffic conditions. Seeing that the bus is only a mile from your house might not be that useful if one day it's in gridlocked traffic and the next it's nothing but open road and green lights.
  - calebh 8y ago
    I use the MBTA buses sometimes to get from my house to the nearest train stop after which I make a transfer to another bus. A real time map of the bus locations would be 100x more valuable than just a prediction. Same with the train - I use a website that shows the exact locations of all the MBTA trains, and I am able to accurately predict how long the train will sit outside of the Alewife station (which is infuriating BTW) based on the number of trains currently at the platform. A prediction would not be able to take into account this domain knowledge and would be completely worthless.
    - bsder 8y ago
      > A prediction would not be able to take into account this domain knowledge and would be completely worthless. This x100. I do this all the time with Lyft drivers. "No, please don't listen to Google Maps for this. The route it is trying to take you on goes from totally open to totally clogged over the span of 6:45AM to 7:00AM. Trust me, the route I am having you take me on will be faster by the time we get there." People are way more clever than you think.

3 ms·

You can see bus locations on the individual bus route pages, for example: https://www.mbta.com/schedules/741/line https://www.mbta.com/schedules/741/line

by vcryan 8y ago

You can see bus locations on the individual bus route pages, for example: https://www.mbta.com/schedules/741/line https://www.mbta.com/schedules/741/line

bsder 8y ago
They commented that they just started rolling it out this week. The problem is that they should have spent 0% of their time on prediction and 100% of their time on actual tracking. Once you have tracking, prediction pretty much comes along for the ride.
- fastball 8y ago
  Not really. Just tracking the location in an app isn't going to tell you anything about traffic conditions. Seeing that the bus is only a mile from your house might not be that useful if one day it's in gridlocked traffic and the next it's nothing but open road and green lights.
  - calebh 8y ago
    I use the MBTA buses sometimes to get from my house to the nearest train stop after which I make a transfer to another bus. A real time map of the bus locations would be 100x more valuable than just a prediction. Same with the train - I use a website that shows the exact locations of all the MBTA trains, and I am able to accurately predict how long the train will sit outside of the Alewife station (which is infuriating BTW) based on the number of trains currently at the platform. A prediction would not be able to take into account this domain knowledge and would be completely worthless.
    - bsder 8y ago
      > A prediction would not be able to take into account this domain knowledge and would be completely worthless. This x100. I do this all the time with Lyft drivers. "No, please don't listen to Google Maps for this. The route it is trying to take you on goes from totally open to totally clogged over the span of 6:45AM to 7:00AM. Trust me, the route I am having you take me on will be faster by the time we get there." People are way more clever than you think.