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Subway [Feeds]

Feeds, Info Tech

This is a post for the New Yorkers out there. I’m sure there are similar services for other cities, and I hope people will write about them in the comments.

Riding the New York City Subway can be like playing the slot machine. Because of constant construction on the 100 year old system, the trains are always being re-routed. You get on the E train, and suddenly find out that it is taking the path of the F train. You take a local 7 and find out it is only making express stops, or that after midnight all service between Queens and Manhattan has been discontinued. I once found myself standing on a 7 platform late at night wondering why the only other passengers were construction workers!

There is a lot that could be done to improve the way the MTA communicates with customers. Right now the best we have is a web page with weekly service advisories. It would be better if they provided real-time information, since these advisories often bear little relation to the actual service changes. But, till the MTA gets its act together, we can be grateful to Robot Polishers who has managed to turn the weekly service advisories into RSS feeds. You can subscribe to individual feeds for each train route.

And for those who prefer e-mail, the straphangers network offers to send the same information to your e-mail box each week.

And if you are a NYC blogger, make sure your blog is on the subway map! [

More feeds” posts here.]

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