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I haven't taken a trip with it yet, so no Real Usage, but from opening it and farting around, I can see that the really important stuff is there and it looks like a good base from which to begin.

It's written in Kotlin, too, which scores style points big time.

Very stylish, kudos to the UI design and implementation folks at the #MBTA

The nice thing about this is that I already know reliable the underlying data is, so it really is just "is the UI good, responsive, usable" (verdict: seems to be) to evaluate if an application will be worth it

I wonder if they are open to the idea of sponsoring the development of the application directly. If this proves useful, I would gladly transfer the money that currently goes into my subscription to Transit into a donation to development.

@SnoopJ I want to like and use this app more than I do. I have the iOS version but find some parts of the UI inscrutable. I could be doing it wrong and need to spend some more time with it, but I wish I could just put in my direction (inbound to Boston) and a train number and have it tell me if my train is on-time, delayed, etc.

@chrisgervais hopefully you've already sent them some direct feedback along those lines, but I hear you. I imagine "knows what the number of their train is" is well into "power user" territory for this context. And I imagine given the MBTA budget writ large that they're probably very much trying to deliver this thing iteratively with the must-haves out in front, and then responding to what's missing from the rest.

Maybe I will notice more warts when I start making use of it. Not being able to search up an address and see transit near that address is definitely a missing stair for me.

@chrisgervais poking around in it a bit more, I don't see functionality equivalent to Transit's "follow this vehicle specifically" workflow.

Seems that if you pull up the timetable for a particular vehicle from a stop, then wait for that vehicle to pass the stop, the UI swaps to the *next* vehicle to visit that stop. I can understand why they'd do that, but also it's a mild nuisance not to be able to follow *your* vehicle once you've boarded.

@SnoopJ Good news is that it’s open source! I’ve already pulled a local and am going to poke around a bit. I wanted to play it more before sending them feedback as my comments may be in the power user category.

Overall, the MBTA Commuter Rail needs a massive overhaul of signage and train identifiability. Trains are announced by train number, but the signs show the final destination and how people not familiar with this system navigate is beyond me. Parts of the experience are user hostile and wicked confusing.

@chrisgervais oh, sorry, I didn't realize you were talking about the Commuter Rail specifically and was thinking of subway trains!

Definitely agree that the experience is suboptimal, although I generally see a lot of that as a direct consequence of its storied private-operator history.

I have also pulled down a local copy of the application, mostly to poke around to see if there's a way to make the Mapbox telemetry opt-out more discoverable for the average user (seems that Mapbox goes to some pains to hide information about how to do this)

@SnoopJ Great idea and an important privacy enhancement.

I should have been clearer - I suspect their primary use case is the subway trains versus Commuter Rail.

@chrisgervais or the bus network! The stop-by-stop display is *incredible* and blows Transit out of the water for sure in terms of whole-route visibility.

Which is part of what makes the lack of an address lookup frustrating, since you have to know where *on the map* your destination is, or xref against another application.

But I imagine that's a relatively straightforward thing to implement When There's Time™

@SnoopJ And buses!

I’m on a plane right now so can’t really load the app. I’m wondering if I can fork it and make a more CR-specific approach or mode/view.

There’s a 3rd-party app, MBTA Rail, that I don’t subscribe to but has the basic features I’d like. Mainly, I’m on the same train inbound so am concerned about delays. Going home, I leave from Back Bay but take trains at different times. I just really want a “can I make a particular train at a particular time and is it on time and are there any delays along Ira route” answer easily.

I have Transit and like the UI but really haven’t used it in years. The train integration in Apple Maps seems good but the UI isn’t geared to my use case. Maybe I just need to get off my butt and write this little app!

@aburka it does! The data from the MBTA is really quite good. Google still manages to regularly screw up on top of that stream of data, but Transit is clearly leaning on it around here, despite also folding in their reporting.

Looks like MBTA Go is based on Mapbox, I'm not sure if their equivalent telemetry feature is in use or not though.