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Why does the MBTA Web site hate Forest Hills?
By adamg on Sun, 03/21/2010 - 12:58pm
To try to help somebody out, I wanted to see which bus lines go from Forest Hills to the Dedham Mall and when (yeah, I know, the 34 and 34E go there, but when?). So on the handy little form right on the MBTA home page, I typed in "forest hills" as my starting point and "dedham mall" as my destination, and got back this:
Really, MBTA Trip Planner? Come on.
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Comments
Forest Hills, Maryland, maybe?
It's not enough that there are no bus routes thru Forest Hills, an intermodal transit node. On top of that, JP is about 450 miles from Worcester, which puts it somewhere in Maryland, I believe.
station
I think you have to type "forest hills STATION."
Ding ding ding
Correct. As anyone who has used the MBTA trip planner since day 1 knows- you have to postfix the station name with "station", or it doesn't realize what you meant.
However, ever since Google Maps came out with the transit option for Boston, the MBTA trip planner is worthless. The Google version will correctly route someone from the #39 to the green line (via a rather short walk to newton highlands) whereas the mbta version will route you all the way to copley for the green line transfer.
I think you mean Brookline Village ;)
Walking from the #39 to Newton Highlands would be... interesting.
Short walk to Newton Highlands?
What part of the #39 bus route goes anywhere near Newton?
Hard to believe, but ...
Not everybody has used the trip planner since day 1.
This is true. Google Maps
This is true. Google Maps definitely knows what it's doing waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better than the MBTA, which is kinda sad, when you think about it. But still better for us, who need routes that make sense.
One thing
One thing neither Google Maps nor the MBTA allow for in their routing is the ability to walk between stations/stops. For example, it can actually be faster for me at times to take the 47 bus to the Green B Line at BU West in order to get from Cambridge to Brighton...but because the 47 bus stops at Mountfort and Lenox which is a few blocks from either BU West or BU Central on the Green Line, it won't ever suggest it.
Their routing says I can walk before and after I use the bus/subway...but not during. And there are quite a few places in this city where a 2-3 block walk mid-route would cut off the need for you to sit on long wandering routes that take forever.
True. Unless things have
True. Unless things have changed, it will never suggest you take the #1 bus inbound to Albany St. and change to the CT2 a short block away for destinations on that route. Just a ferinstance.
Right!
"I think you have to type "forest hills STATION.""
You are absolutely correct!
Find Stations and Landmarks
It works if you do it with the "Find Stations and Landmarks menu, but I agree it's strange that it can't recognize them as text. The trip planner works pretty well, but it does have weird blind spots. It refuses to acknowledge that I can transfer from the 73 to the 66 in Harvard Square, so to go from Belmont to Brookline it always sends me downtown.
trip planner
once told me, going from mass. ave near symphony to lynn; walk pas the hynes stop to kenmore, take the green line back through hynes to north station, change to the orange line and go back to haymarket where i could get a bus to lynn. insert expletive at will.
Trip Planner Issue
I have found that it can do this with just about any station, when that station is referred to as, say, Forest Hills or South station and not "Forest Hills MBTA Station" or "South Station Regional Transit Whatever".
For some reason, these things are identified with very formalistic names in the data base that nobody would ever use in everyday language. Type in the everyday language, and it won't find what you want.
Easy fix
I mean, yes, we should expect the MBTA trip planner to work. But since it doesn't, an easy fix is to use google maps and ask it for public transit directions. It's a much better application than the MBTA one -- it searches for the place you type in and locates the closest matching thing, even if that thing isn't in the MBTA database. For instance, you could type in the name of a landmark or business, and it will automagically pull it up and get you directions to/from it. You can even misspell names of T stations and things.
Oh, also...
It thinks you meant the Forest Hills in NYC. Unlike google directions, it doesn't default to the one nearest you. (Google guesses your location by the location of your IP address if your device doesn't have a GPS and by exact location if you do have a GPS in your device.)
Not the Forest Hills in NYC,
Not the Forest Hills in NYC, cuz that's only about 215 miles.
I have seen some truly bizarre directions from the trip planner. I almost never believe what it says anymore.
Why would a regional transit authority have locations way outside its territory, anyway?
I don't think it's as the crow flies though
I once had it actually give me directions to Forest Hills in NYC, only they were via some bassackwards route through Pennsylvania or something.
It seems to derive its data from some mapping program without having limited the data to that in its jurisdiction.
Why it would assume Forest
Why it would assume Forest Hills in NYC is beyond me, as it is the *MBTA*. It could at least offer a "do you mean" option. I've been bitten by its rigid naming database many tiems over the years. But Google Map's public transit directions have blind spots too. Yesterday I wanted public transit directions to Dugger Park in Medford and Google Maps directed me to walk there from Davis Sq., Somerville, which was silly. THe MBTA trip planner got me much closer (via the 80 bus).
Walking directions
Another strange thing about the trip planner is that it seems to work like a T map superimposed on a city map. So it shows how to get from a station on the T map to a location on the city map. If you ask for directions to Sullivan Station, it will tell you to take the Orange line to Sullivan station, then walk fifteen minutes to Sullivan Station. It shows you coming out of the station on a different street than the actual exit, then walking in a circle back to the front of the station.
It's bringing up Forest
It's bringing up Forest Hills, PA, in the Pittsburgh metro area.
If you type Forest Hills, MA it comes up with a decent answer: walk from "Forest Hills" (which it marks as the edge of the cemetery, on Leland St) to Forest Hills Busway (13 minutes) and catch the bus to "Washington St & Incinerator Rd".
Geographic names are good to include so you don't have to know the exact intersection where a particular hospital or arena is located, but perhaps they could drop everything westa Wihstah from their database.
That's not the only one
If you ask it to go to Central Square, or sometimes even Central Square Station, it tells you this is not possible. Or it takes you to Woburn or something instead of Cambridge. At the very least, take me to the commuter rail stop "Central Square Lynn". But Woburn? Oy.
I think they've made some improvements to it, but it's still not ok that a major stop on the red line doesn't show up when the query is logical. I'm sure it's not the only glitch.