

Building Waze for the Boston subway: my first adventure in civic hacking - gklitt
http://geoffreylitt.com/2015/02/28/mbta-ninja.html

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sethbannon
"In a world where political systems are increasingly gridlocked every day, and
much of Silicon Valley is focused on peddling ads, the civic innovation and
open data movements are a bright and optimistic exception to the zeitgeist."

Amen to this! I'm excited by the trend of more hackers realizing that they
have the skills to fix a lot of what is broken about politics and government.

~~~
aepearson
Amen, x2!

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this_user
This idea has a lot more potential. Once you have the data, you can obviously
give the individual user the best alternative route if there is delay on the
desired one. You can also use this proactively, similar to what "Google Now"
does, to alert commuters in the morning how much longer their trip might take.
You could even offer functionality to automatically adjust the phone's alarm
clock.

But you can take this even further than individual users and dynamically re-
route passenger flows if enough of them are using the service. Say there is an
interruption on a main commuter route, but several alternatives exist. Most
people are now likely to choose the second best route. Since that route is
unlikely to be able to handle the additional passengers, it will probably be
jammed very quickly. However, using the RT passenger and situation data, it
would be possible to find the globally optimal solution for load balancing the
passenger flow. You can then provide the passengers via smartphone with
individualised information regarding which route to take to implement this
routing.

I think this has a lot of potential for taking public transport to the next
level by utilising existing capacities to the fullest extent and providing
benefits to all passengers.

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chiph
Not actually Waze - title would be better along the lines of: "Building a
Waze-like for the Boston subway"

~~~
ryanthejuggler
I think the title was written in the spirit of "It's Uber for <X>". Agreed
that it could be clearer though.

~~~
gklitt
Yeah, this was the intention. As cliche as "X for Y" has become these days, I
can see why it's such a popular format. Most people instantly get what MBTA
Ninja is, based on a four word tagline.

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hugenerd
This seems similar to is metro broke?

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/is-metro-
broke/id849428357?m...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/is-metro-
broke/id849428357?mt=8)

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pimlottc
I like the confirmation model. And mbta.ninja is a cool domain name, though
why besmirch it with a needless www?

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untog
This could be very interesting, and could even sit in the background and track
user's movements without needing an explicit action to report problems.

Unless you're in New York where everything is underground of course. Sadly.

~~~
mayneack
Most of the MBTA is underground too. However, at least the green and red lines
have cell reception underground.

~~~
bwanab
The Orange and Blue lines have it also. As far as I know the whole system is
wired underground.

~~~
mayneack
yeah, figured as much, but didn't want to make claims about lines I hadn't
used enough to know for sure.

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chrisBob
Eastbound, Northbound, Southbound, Westbound?

I am not sure the authors have ever been to Boston. Here there is only
_Inbound_ and _Outbound_. I went to www.mbta.ninja and then spent about 30
seconds trying to figure out if any of the alerts are related to me.

~~~
_august
Inbound/Outbound changes at Park St, correct? So South/North/East/West seems
to be more helpful here.

Of course, they could ask you to input a station first, then display the
connecting lines as inbound/outbound.

~~~
sisk
The four stations where the directions change are the square made up of Park
Street, State Street, DTX, and Government Center (or Haymarket since Gov
Center is down? Not sure, haven't been to Haymarket in at least two years).

Directionality (for new folks) or terminus (for more seasoned riders) are
infinitely better than Inbound/Outbound.

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cllns
I had a lackluster interview experience at the company the author works for
and mentions. After completing a coding challenge, I got a generic:

    
    
      "After deliberating, we have decided not to proceed with your application."
    

I asked for more specific feedback, from two different people, and got no
response.

~~~
swanson
This seems completely unrelated to the article and doesn't really add anything
to the conversation.

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cllns
I mentioned it because the company itself was plugged in the post.

Also there's a bit of irony involved, where they're extolling the virtues of
data, but failing to provide proper interview feedback.

