BusTime, the MTA's phone and web service to find out where the hell your freaking bus is, is coming to (more of) Manhattan! After successful debuts on Staten Island and in the Bronx—and a test run on 34th Street in Manhattan—the service is set to be available across New York County very soon.
The MTA isn't giving a more detailed release plan than that, but they will say that they plan to have all 5,700 of their buses up and running in the system by April of 2014. After Manhattan goes online Brooklyn and Queens should follow in quick measure.
"BusTime has proven extremely popular among bus riders on Staten Island and the Bronx - and I can tell you that because customers have come to me on buses in the Bronx and said we did a really great job on BusTime,” Fernando Ferrer, the MTA's Acting Chairman said in a statement. "They find it useful and easy to access, and I think that’s a tremendous endorsement of what we have been doing. BusTime is so helpful to our customers that we have scheduled an extremely aggressive timetable to introduce it to three other boroughs."
Using BusTime is remarkably simple as you can see in the below video (which says the whole system should be done by 2013—the date was pushed back by Hurricane Sandy). Still, it has gotten some criticism that it is too complicated for older users who don't have smartphones and don't text frequently. Can't win 'em all!
So when is the MTA going to hook the BusTime system up with some fancy curbside countdown clocks? Not anytime soon.
