Development of Train Schedules via Text Message

My buddy and I ride NJ Transit Rail every day in and out of Manhattan. Normally, it the same old thing every week day, you know your train in and you know your train home. However, every now and then we get the opportunity to break up the monotony and hit a bar or something on the way home. We often found that after the bar, neither of us would have a schedule or any idea when our next train is. We finally decided to do something about it.

We developed this application that allows us to basically text NJ Transit and get back our next train home. Since it has made our lives that little bit easier, we have decided to share it with other NJT Rail goers. Its free, its easy, and it makes your life a little bit better. http://www.whatsmytrain.com Try it out, tell us what you think.

It's just a simple little app and its prone to bugs and what not. It's in a BETA phase so if you run into problems let us know.

Hope all of you will find it useful!

- whatsmytrain

Looks good, have you thought about developing this for the iPhone?

- A

Yes, we have tossed around the Idea of making an iphone app but if you have an iphone, you may as well just go to the NJT website on it. Our target audience with this app is those that don't have great web service on their mobile device.

Currently, we are debugging the reader so the app is down. With all of these new users testing the app, we have found that our reader code does not always parse the message out of the email correctly.

I will update when its back up.

The app is back up and running. please feel free to test / break it. Thanks!

We have also recently implemented alerts.

So if you text "alerts summit to nyp" or "alert rutherford" it will look up those lines and report if there is a service alert on them to you.

Today we added a help feature where you text 'help' to whats my train and it will tell you how to use it.

We also added a Fares Feature where you can text 'Fares [Origin] to [Destination]' and it will tell you how much it costs for one way, round trip off peak etc...

Enjoy!

Does anyone know if this service would force my wireless company to charge me for receiving messages?

Please, watch the Nazi Banksters Crimes Ripple Effect at http://jforjustice.co.uk/banksters

If you don't have a plan that includes Text Messaging, you'll be charged by your carrier. Which doesn't sound good, .

I know it sounds strange, but I don't text nor have a texting plan.

yeah if you don't have a texting plan, they will charge you. I would use it sparingly

Please, watch the Nazi Banksters Crimes Ripple Effect at http://jforjustice.co.uk/banksters

Today we are starting to work on adding a LIRR / Metro North lookup. Hopefully it will be as easy as NJT.