Last week, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the New York City subways, buses, and commuter rails, announced it will no longer be tweeting service updates because Twitter is too unreliable now. Yes, Elon Musk, the man who started several companies out of disdain for public transportation as a concept, made Twitter too unreliable for even the New York City subway. Other transit agencies are considering doing the same.
Twitter updates were a useful but limited tool in the arsenal of subway navigation services. The same information the MTA posted to Twitter would also be posted to its website and APIs third party apps can display. The Twitter alerts were most useful for providing a clear timeline of events, seeing how long ago a service alert was issued, what updates have been provided, and what residual delays there may be after a problem is resolved and the service alert disappears.
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The MTA provided a list of alternatives for people to use, but they are all in-house MTA apps and services. I am here to help you expand your horizons, embrace the chaos of the New York City subway, and free your inner subway nerd.
I don’t want to be a subway nerd. Just give me an app.
There are three do-everything apps for you to consider: MyMTA, Citymapper, and Transit.
MyMTA is the MTA’s official app. I personally do not like it. It is slow to open, has some funky trip planning advice, and routinely gets updated in a way that breaks the app. Plus, it provides arrival times in the actual time (for example, 4:35 p.m.) rather than a countdown (5 minutes). Apparently, some people prefer this. I am not one of them. It has a 2.3 rating in the App Store, although a lot of the ratings are people complaining about subway service rather than the app itself.
Still, there are better options out there. The two most popular are Citymapper and Transit. Both are good. They will tell you how to get to where you’re going. Whether you prefer one or the other depends on personal preference. I use Transit because I find the home screen more useful and better at incorporating strange MTA service changes into trip routing.
For commuter rail—Long Island Rail Road and Metro North—use the official MTA app, TrainTime. Unlike MyMTA, it’s good.
Do not use Google Maps. Tourists and noobs use Google Maps.
I don’t want an app to tell me what to do
Neither do I. And you don’t need it. You can do better than these apps with a little knowledge and effort.
The main thing to do is create an icon on your phone for new.mta.info, which is the MTA’s homepage. Before you go to the subway, check to see if there’s an advisory for your line. If there isn’t, you’ve done your duty. The rest is up to the MTA gods.
There is no god in the subway. How do I take matters into my own hands?
I’m glad you asked. Just because the MTA says there are no service alerts doesn’t mean service is good.
To go beyond the MTA service alerts, you need to look at headways, which is the time between trains on a line. The MTA does not have any easy tools for this. Fortunately, it publishes this data through an API for independent developers to use. My favorite is called Good Service, made by Sunny Ng. It includes official delay notifications while also analyzing headways to tell you whether service is Good, Not Good, Slow, and other helpful warnings. Click on a line and you’ll see a detailed breakdown of headways and run times, or how long it is taking for trains to get from one end of the line to the other. You can also sort the information by station instead of line.
Ng also made The Weekendest, which presents similar information but in a different way. Instead of a home page with all the lines, it shows line status overlaid on a geographically accurate subway map along with the location of trains. (Ng made his before the MTA released a similar and inferior version.) Both Good Service and The Weekendest work well on mobile.
I use these websites most often to figure out how service alerts will affect my trip specifically. For example, a signal problem in the Bronx on the line I use will take perhaps 45 minutes to an hour to noticeably affect service near me in Brooklyn. So if an alert for a problem far away just went out and I am only going a few stops, I usually ignore it and everything goes fine. But if the alert is for somewhere near me, I assume I am fucked and find alternate travel. I can use Good Service or The Weekendest to easily see where the trains are bunching or slowing due to issues and plan accordingly.
If this sounds like too much effort for you, trust me, I get it. But once you start getting nimble with these detailed tools, it opens up a whole world of possibilities for expert subway navigation. Time cross-platform transfers down to the minute. Execute the “take the local in the wrong direction to get on an express” move only when the trains line up to save you those crucial four minutes. Learn exactly where the break-even points are on the “take the local that’s arriving now or wait for the express” decision matrix.
Eventually, as your knowledge builds, something spectacular happens. You cease to be a captor of the city’s temperamental transportation system. You become its partner in an intricate dance. You are free of the passive service alerts, which tell you not so much how to get unfucked as much as the degree to which you are fucked. I think you, and we as a species, are better than that. Leave the Twitter service alerts behind you and join me and the rest of my fellow subway nerds in a better world.
What about buses?
Buses are great, but there is no secret to buses. Check headways using Transit or Citymapper before you leave and pray for as few cars parked in bus lanes as possible, if your route has bus lanes at all, which it probably doesn’t. While you’re stuck behind a BMW X5 with ghost plates, write to your councilperson demanding more bus lanes and better enforcement.
