After some of its usual delays, the MTA began testing subway arrival time displays in mid-January. I saw them in action today during a lunchtime jaunt to the East Side. The aim is to eventually extend this system to many more lines, but right now, it’s only active on the L, which cuts across Manhattan’s 14th Street into Brooklyn.
In at least several of the two-dozen stations on the line, small rectangular scrolling-LED signs hang above the platform. The ones at the Eighth Avenue stop weren’t working correctly, claiming arrival times of “0 Min” interspersed with this warning:
At the Union Square station they appeared to be accurate, alternating arrival times of the next two approaching trains from both the east and the west. This photo from the Third Avenue station lists “0 Min” for the Brooklyn-bound train I just exited and notes another will arrive in nine minutes.
I will admit there is a certain comfort in knowing when your train will show up. For instance, knowing it will be, say, 10 minutes would allow you to temporarily sneak up or over to one of those underground newsstands to stand on line for a bag of Doritos or something. And if your platform is above-ground, in inclement weather it’d be helpful to know you could hide out in the shelter and warmth of the station until your train pulls in.
Conceivably, these signs would alert straphangers to big delays on the line; if you’re running late for something important, it’d be invaluable to know your train won’t be appearing anytime soon and you’d be better off cabbing it. Finally, once they install signage like this on lines that have local and express trains running across the platform from one another, it will be useful to check whether you’ll save time exiting the local and waiting to pick up the express.
I’m keen to see how this system will unfold and bring the MTA up to speed with the world’s other big public transit systems. Major cities I’ve visited in the past 12 months—Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Dublin and Rome—already have subway arrival time displays very similar to New York’s test version.