Behold, the future

Several traveling tipsters have reported the awesome new MTA app will make your downtown ventures that much easier. The MTA Subway Time app basically displays the exact same information that’s on the overhead station clocks—the projected train arrival times, including any delays—except on your phone. As the helpful image to the right illustrates, you can see up to four trains in advance.

While the benefit of it being *on your phone* is enough to score a download, the eventually completed app would be particularly useful for those few stations that still don’t have the overhead timers (a.k.a all of the Brooklyn R stations ever). Station inequality aside, we can see this app actually being helpful in deciding how fast to sprint/powerwalk/stroll to the subway, although that implies a level of advance planning we never considered.

The test version of the app only has information for the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and S lines…but it’s not like Columbia students venture any farther than that. And to make this even more attractive to us, the MTA advertises the app as a motion towards “transparency,” proving that we’re not the only ones obsessed with the concept. We <3 NY.