Love it or hate it, the subway system in New York is still the cheapest and easiest way for anyone to get around town. MetroCard prices have been on the rise for years with not a whole lot of improvement on the trains themselves. Even catching a train in Manhattan can take what seems like forever when 5 minute waits turn into 20 minute waits. Forget Brooklyn and Queens. Pack some food and a small survival kit because you may never get back to the outer boroughs if you’re relying on one train. We’ve come to love and rely on our subway system, despite it’s shortcomings, but it would be great to know if or when we could give up on one train and catch another.

 

Seetra.in, a new mobile app, may actually give us the information we need for our trains on the go. The days of waiting forever for a train that may never come might be gone. In fact, Seetra.in makes us hopeful about the way we can catch trains from now on. The app can detect the location of subway cars in real time. This means finally knowing when a train might show up in a station. It means that savvy New Yorkers who leave a few minutes early can instead get a cup of coffee or a bite to eat, because they know exactly when their train will arrive. There’s no need to rush and do guesswork on the probability of a train showing up when you need it.

Users will know the app is accurate because Seetra.in’s creators will be working closely with the MTA, which has hoped to make transportation data publicly available for some time. The HTML5 creation was shown off last weekend at PDF: Applied and though it’s still in beta its creators are hoping to have a fully functional version available soon. Seetra.in should be able to work on any phone, but requires an internet connection, so remember to check on all your possible train routes before heading underground!

Check out more on Seetra.in’s website!

[ Via Gizmodo ]