Tuesday, January 11th, 2011

While the subway system’s countdown clocks are popping up on numbered lines, many stations still have no clocks or non-functioning clocks, leaving New Yorkers with that common feeling of not knowing whether it will take 3 or 30 minutes until they can hop on their train.  Now, a Columbia University student has attempted to remedy this problem with a new iPhone app.  The New York Post reports that Alex Bell, a lifeling subway rider and Upper West Sider, developed a free iPhone app that will tell subway riders when their trains will arrive.  The app, called SubwayArrival, uses cellphone technology to track users as they enter and leave the subway to determine how long it took them to get from one station to another, and will not work until 10,000 people have installed it (at the time of the Post‘s report, only about 100 New Yorkers have installed the app).  Bell, a 23-year-old electrical engineering grad student at Columbia, says that he also plans to release the app on Android, Blackberry, and other phones soon.

Filed under: Free, News, Upper West Side, Upper West Side Blog No Comments »
Tags: Alex Bell, Apps, Cell Phone Apps, iPhone App, SubwayArrival, Train