Train Kid

How would it feel to get around Boston if your transit app knew about missed connections, ghost buses, and rush hour crowding?

What is Train Kid?

Train Kid is a transit planning app like Google Maps or the Transit app. But Train Kid knows about slow Green Line trolleys and why 3 buses arrive in a row. Based on real data collected from thousands of real MBTA trips, Train Kid keeps working when transit hits the exceptions that form the rule.

Most other apps give you an exact estimated arrival time, which is usually wrong by at least a few minutes. Train Kid shows you a range of possible arrival times based on data. Instead of building in 10 minutes of arbitrary time, or worse, no time at all, Train Kid lets you know exactly when to leave in order to guarantee you arrive on time.

Train Kid works by imagining taking your trip 50 times in a real-world, data-based simulation of the MBTA. Then it tells you about what it learned in an understandable way.

Acknowledgements

Inspired by the excellent When(ish) is My Bus? by Kay, Kola, Hullman, and Munson - thanks to Professor Michelle Borkin for showing me the paper.