74 minutes from the North End to Copley Square?
By adamg - Mon, 06/29/2009 - 1:06pm.
David checked the trip planner on mbta.com to see how to get from the North End to Copley. Its primary suggestion: Get on the Green Line and, 20 minutes or so later, get off at Copley. Its proposed alternative: Take commuter rail from North Station to Porter Square, hop on the Red Line for a trip to Broadway (in South Boston), then take the 9 bus:
... I would have thought the orange line from Haymarket to Back Bay station would be a decent second.
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Hilarious!
I typically get very reliable recommendations from the T's site. This is hilarious!
With MapQuest or Microsoft's
With MapQuest or Microsoft's there were some old hilarious ones that involved things like trans-Atlantic loops.
Google Maps had a couple Easter-egg jokes coded in.
Incidentally, mbta.com's planner worked OK for me just now:
http://imgur.com/pLIhA.jpg
What do you expect, Google /
What do you expect, Google / MBTA bot isn't skynet just yet.
Trip Planner Software Mixup
They must have installed the BostonHackneyGPS software code module into the MBTA Trip Planner by mistake.
Every so often the MBTA will
Every so often the MBTA will give me the longest route first followed by the shortest route as an alternative.
Let me see spend 2 hours on the buses and trains, or walk 2 tenths of a mile to another bus and get there in 20 minutes...
Theyre probably taking into
Theyre probably taking into account signal problems on the orange line (+15 minutes) and the possibility of getting stabbed (5% chance of 3 hour delay) when crafting this recommendation.
The problem
I've noticed that their mapping algorithm is greedy. It looks for the fastest/shortest way to get you into the system heading in the right direction and then keeps you on that line until it *has* to remove you to a new line. It also never takes extra walking into account whenever possible.
This isn't too bad for buses running on a dedicated schedule (ideally, anyways).
The problem arises especially when it considers the subways as having specific schedules for all of their stops. It takes the ideal headways for that time of day and simply iterates through the time period that the headway is pertinent. (Start at 9AM, add 8 minutes, add 8 more to 9:08...). So, if your headway is every 15 minutes starting on the hour and you're asking for a route to leave from your house at 9:16 AM, then a lot of times it'll find a "better" route that puts you on the system (like by bus) prior to 9:30 instead of waiting the 14 minutes. This ignores the reality that a) subway headways are COMPLETELY unpredictable at the MBTA, and b) waiting 14 minutes to go 5 minutes down the rail is faster than waiting 2 minutes to ride 2 buses for 30 minutes...
I can never figure out when this ugly "greediness" in its search is going to pop up, but I've found the easiest way to get around it is to shift your requested departure (or arrival) time by 5-10 minutes and see if the route remains steady.
But don't worry! Pesaturo has assured us that the MBTA is working with Google AS WE SPEAK to get the schedule data on Google Maps in no time!
Extra Walking
FYI - you can adjust the amount of walking using a drop down in the input menu. It does assume that people take a half hour to walk a mile, though.
That said, I wonder why it tries to put somebody on three buses in a circle when there could be a rapid transit step in between. It also puts people on express buses rather than onto the subway. There isn't a sense of minimizing cost built into it.
I usually play with it a bit so that I select a route according to what I know about the system (unpredictable subway times) and what options it gives me.
Wasn't clear
For "extra walking" I meant as an intermediary step.
For example, if I want to get to Cambridgeport from near St. Elizabeth's, it'll tell me to take two buses (one to Allston, one to River St and Mem Drive) and walk quite a way or to take the Green Line all the way to Park St and then the Red Line back out to Central Square. As opposed to telling me to take the Green Line in to BU West or BU Central, and then walk a few blocks to the CT2 to get into the Cambridgeport area. Once you're "in the system" it won't let you off again until you get really close to your destination. Walking is ONLY for the start and end of your trips.
Yeah, it doesn't allow walking in the middle
It overlooks places that are basically transfer points, like Copley to Back Bay or Brookline Village to corner of Huntington and South Huntington. These two connections are shorter walks than, say, orange line at Ruggles to the bus stop at Ruggles, but it doesn't recognize them since it involves walking between two different stops.
You know what else would be handy? If it had some way of knowing which stretches were covered by several buses where you can pretty much count on a bus being there within a couple minutes. Like, I live about a 10-minute walk from Dudley, but I can also go to the corner in front of RCC and get on most any bus and get to Dudley faster (and drier these days). If I wasn't familiar with the area and used the trip planner, I would be led to think that I was waiting for a particular bus at a particular time, so I would probably just walk. It would be cool if it said "take any of these buses..." in the directions. Also, if it said right there in the planner how frequent the bus runs. When it tells me to get on the bus at 2:16, am I going to have to wait an hour if I get there at 2:17, or can I really get there pretty much any time and have a bus show up in a few minutes?
http://1smootshort.blogspot.com
That is a problem
I'm so used to planning around the trip planner, I forgot about that problem.
When I was in Chicago, the trip planner told me to walk between buses to minimize time, with a default maximum distance. Sometimes, it makes more sense - prime example being orange to green by walking from Back Bay to Copley.
I have several times found the shortest time for a trip is to walk between bus routes traveling within a short distance of each other, but the trip planner doesn't help you out there.
Orange to Green, and other walking transfers between rail lines
The problem with such a transfer is that if you don't have a weekly or monthly pass, you'll have to pay two fares for that trip. Even the best possible trip planner probably doesn't want to tell people to do that.
(This is not a problem for transferring between buses, only between rail lines such as Copley<->Back Bay or Brookline Village<->South Huntington)
I feel that if you pay to
I feel that if you pay to get on the train system you should have a ten minute window to get back on the system without paying again. It seems like a fair way to handle these sorts of issues, and would allow people to jump off the system for a second to see if they are in the right stop by looking outside for a moment.
That would require you to 'tap out'
that is, use your Charlie Card or ticket when exiting a station (or, in the case of the Green Line, exiting a train). Otherwise the system would have no way to tell when the 10-minute window starts. The T's system isn't set up for this.
Also, in the case of a walking transfer between Green Line branches, it might take more than 10 minutes to first walk between lines and then wait for the next train.
I guess thats true. I am
I guess thats true. I am more scared of tapping out of the system then not being able to walk between lines. Ultimately tapping out of the system would create the ability for them to charge per mile etc
So why doesn't it suggest it for buses?
Yeah, the bus transfer is free. Also, it tells you the full fare, which assumes you don't have a pass. So it could tell you to take the green line from Riverside to Copley, then the orange from Back Bay to Forest Hills, and tell you that such a trip would cost $3.40. It could also show cheaper options that take longer, and let you choose what you want to do.
http://1smootshort.blogspot.com
I'll never know for sure if it was the right choice
but I took the Orange line for a total trip time of about 20 minutes. I guess my maiden voyages on the Fitchburg line and the 9 bus will have to wait...
If anyone still has an old PalmPilot
You could see whether this ancient MBTA planner works:
http://www.neilvandyke.org/t-map/
I would love to see an up to
I would love to see an up to date real time map for smart phones that tell you how long it will be until buses or trains (mostly buses) reach a certain point.
The reason why I say buses more then trains is because most buses are outside, and the smart phones have a signal outside. Plus buses tend to run off schedule more often then trains due to traffic conditions. All buses should be outfitted with GPS tracking chips anyway, so it would just be a matter of translating those signals to a map and getting times sent to the service.
I realize its not something for now, while they are cutting. Now is just the time to think about it, because at some point everything will pick up a little.
Corporate sponsorship
They could no doubt find a company to underwrite it, since it's something that would actually be cool. "Verizon bus GPS" or something.
That is true, it would be a
That is true, it would be a way to brand something at the MBTA without renaming stations which people freak out over.
Say no to branding public infrastructure
We spend a massive amount of public money on transportation infrastructure, and I'd think that should be more than enough for what we're getting.
This goes for advertising, too.
It obviously is not
It obviously is not enough... I would say ok to a FULL branding of the system if it meant a quality system for free. So every step in that direction is a plus for me.
You have to play it right
By default, you get the worst of all worlds.
Brand it all you like, so
Brand it all you like, so long as money starts flowing into that decrepit old system of theirs. If the trains run on time, who cares if it's called the TD BankNorth Station?
Despite the cutting
It could be something for now, if they wanted to increase their customer base, as well as if the region wanted its people spending hours being productive (and spending money) rather than waiting at poorly-chosen bus stops at poorly-chosen times.