4 ms·

A map isn't necessary to show a location. The digital sign could just display the name of the last intersection the bus was at. (I'm not convinced that's any be

• bobthepanda 8y ago
  Each approach has its own tradeoffs. - Time. Time has the advantage of brevity ("15 min" takes up a grand total of five characters) and indisputable meaning. It's also the hardest to predict, and people get pretty upset about incorrect predictions. - Intersection. On a signboard, intersection names can get quite long. You would also need familiarity with where exactly the intersection is located, how the bus gets from there to your stop, etc. Boston is famously non-gridded, and has no real consistent rhyme or reason to its street layout, so that would be very confusing. - Miles/stops away. New York's BusTime uses this. This is a pretty indisputable metric, and if you have GPS or a working odometer is trivial to confirm. But this runs into the same problem as intersections; you need context. The bus is two stops away, but how long does it take to make those two stops? A mile passing through Times Square is very different from a mile through the leafy, quiet suburbs of Queens. You can pick between meaning and certainty, but it's very hard to have both.