Some Good News for Bus Riders

Continuing the unofficial SAR "I tell you some helpful stuff, thereby justifying the existence of this blog" week: have you T-riding locals been using NextBus? Because it's pretty useful. NextBus uses the GPS data from MBTA vehicles to monitor the locations of buses along the T's routes.

I mainly use it in the morning when I'm getting ready to leave the house, to see how my bus is running and whether I need to dash out the door right at that moment if I want to make my usual bus, or if I have a couple of minutes left to calmly gather my belongings. It remembers my most recent route query from one visit to the next, which saves a few potentially valuable seconds. And it's accurate, even a bit conservative (perhaps an intentional margin of error, but I don't know).

Route information has been available for certain routes on a pilot basis for some time, but according to Universal Hub, the MBTA is now making the data for every one of its bus lines. Hopefully this will be expanded to the subway line soon.