Red Line Ashmont Train is Now Approaching

post by jefftk (jkaufman) · 2023-12-14T02:50:11.382Z · LW · GW · 2 comments

The MBTA has now fully fixed the sign issue I was complaining about! It's great:

For years I grumbled inside whenever I was approaching a station and saw the digital signs switch to "Attention passengers, the next red line train". This could signal any of:

• 25%: My train is coming, I can catch it if I hustle.
• 25%: I'm missing my train.
• 50%: A train I don't care about is doing something.

If I waited the sign would switch to, for example, "to Ashmont is now approaching", but time when I'm trying to decide whether to hurry to catch a train is unusually precious!

The issue was that they were displaying a transcription of the audio announcement instead of tailoring the textual notification to the medium. Several months ago they fixed the arriving version, and recently they fixed the "approaching" version as well. Yay!

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