NYU Students make use of MTA data to highlight NYC Bus performance

[Via Garibaldi 8]

OK, that I can agree on. Leaving 10+ minutes late is overkill and they'll most likely never get back on schedule.

 

FWIW, I remember talking to an MTA representative, and asking how they make sure the runtimes aren't too long (in other words, if a bus shows up on-time at Timepoint A & Timepoint B, how can they be sure that the driver isn't dragging the line between those points to avoid running early?) If a driver shows up on-time to A and early to B, or late to A and on-time to B, then it's obvious the B/O was able to make it in less time than the schedule allowed, but if the B/O shows up on-time to both points but was crawling like the S53 I had earlier, then there's no way of telling just from BusTime data alone.

I've been quite annoyed with this situation and I've been requesting in my complaints that they do just what you stated... Adjust the run times accordingly.  On the lines that I've filed complaints on they've done just that, and the run times are very reasonable overall, so IMO there's no need to leave the terminal late.  If they haven't done it on a few lines yet, they'll likely get to it.  They'll never be able to get the schedules perfect, but if you have to sit and wait a few minutes it shouldn't be any more than say a few minutes or so.  If the B/O is really early, it likely means that they left the terminal too early, which has happened to me a few times.  The advantage of BusTime is they now have real time data that they can analyze which should give them a pretty good idea of how much time a bus needs to get from point A to point B (on average).  A good B/O can navigate those time points.

[checkmatechamp13]

One of the few topics we basically agree on lol.

 

On another note, I checked the Brooklyn-bound S53 in this site, and it says the lateness factor is 259.1%. Apparently, buses run close to schedule until 92nd Street & Gatling Place, but then it takes almost 2.5 hours to get the last few blocks to 4th & 86th LMAO. (The total runtime clocks in at 182 minutes compared to 47 minutes scheduled). I would've thought there would've been an error with buses going over the bridge, but apparently the error is in Brooklyn for the S53.

 

Heading back towards Port Richmond, it shows a lateness factor of 20.9%, which is much more reasonable.

[B35 via Church]

Quote

This might take a moment.
There's a lot of data here....

...Only for the B74 to show up with NO DATA !
(after 7 mins. of waiting btw)

I'm through with this site.... The functionality flat out sucks & whatever metric they're using to determine the lateness factor is flat out.... off.

 

[JubaionBx12+SBS]

One thing that the TransitCenter article I found this site from mentioned is that the MTA needs to do a better job at making performance data publicly accessible and this site was shown as a starting platform for them to perfect. One would expect what is nothing more than a student project to have lots of kinks but if you have highly paid full time professionals working on something like this you would get a lot better results. To me this is more imploring the MTA to release better performance data then they currently do. 

So many transit advocates cite bad data presentation with the MTA that it begs the question whether there's intention behind the MTA's incompetence.