Now You Can Track The NYC Subway In Real Time

The NYC subway doesn’t have a schedule! Well, actually it does — it just doesn’t always follow it. If you have ever wondered if there was a way to know when the next subway would be showing up to the platform, you’re now in luck with a brand new app by the MTA.

The app is called MTA Subway Time and is available as a web app or as an iPhone app, it gives users up-to-the-minute updates of how far away the next subway is. Unfortunately though, due to some train lines being older and not equipped with the latest technology, not every train in the city is trackable, in fact, only the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 42nd Street Shuttle are currently supported.

According to the MTA President, there are seventeen other subway lines in New York, and all of them except for the L and 7 trains will take “hundreds of millions of dollars and years of dedicated effort” to be upgraded, so in other words, it may be a while before we see all of the subways supported.

The app works, but it’s not the greatest. For starters, it isn’t optimized for the iPhone 5 and it doesn’t have features such as directions to the closest subway station or a map of the subway system. The app’s navigation is also very poor, and there isn’t any search functionality, so you’ll have to choose a line and then scroll through all of the stops to find the one you’re looking for.

However with that being said, the app is definitely more geared towards the idea of just showing that this is now possible to do. And the MTA is said to be releasing the data behind Subway Time to developers, allowing them to integrate real time tracking into their own applications for free, which will be great for apps like Google Maps.