All MTA Routes Covered By 2014
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) announced the timetable and sequence in which it will expand MTA Bus Time, the agency’s online real-time bus tracking service.
All bus routes in Manhattan will receive Bus Time this year, followed by Brooklyn, and then Queens, which will be completed by April 2014.
“Bus Time 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 Bus Time,” said Fernando Ferrer, MTA acting chairman. “They find it useful and easy to access, and I think that’s a tremendous endorsement of what we have been doing. Bus Time is so helpful to our customers that we have scheduled an extremely aggressive timetable to introduce it to three other boroughs.”
As described by the MTA, Bus Time takes the wondering and uncertainty out of waiting for the bus. Through text messaging, web, or apps, Bus Time allows customers to learn how far away the next bus is from a given stop.
To use Bus Time, customers send a text message from any cell phone with SMS or MMS text messaging to 511123, visit bustime.mta.info, or use a variety of apps created by third- party tech developers using Bus Time data.
For a short MTA video explaining how Bus Time works, visit https://youtu.be/eIBcn3tCLMg.
Bus Time launched on Staten Island in Jan. 11, 2012, and was expanded to the Bronx in early November 2012. In addition to all bus routes serving those boroughs, it is also available on the B61, B63, M34, M34A, M100 and Q50.
The MTA operates the largest bus fleet of any public transportation provider in North America: 5,700 buses operate out of 28 depots on 300 routes serving 2.6 million customers per day.
