[UPDATE] –

Metro-North was refreshingly prompt and helpful in getting me info about this issue today.

That agency is CHANGING I tell you!

Evidentially, the cancelled train was just cancelled, so there was no period where it was simply late, which Train Time would have caught.

As for the subsequent late train, Train Time only has a small window of time to report that before Train Time drops it from the table – they are looking to expand this window of time.

Hopefully one day in the future when our train doesn’t arrive after 10 minutes, we will be able to check Train Time and reliably get an acknowledgement regardless of the reason or how late the train is. This is goal, and its what riders absolutely deserve.

Until then, some growing pains, but its hard for me to get too critical as I am really impressed with MTA’s new initiatives and encourage them to keep up the good work.

I know from experience that a lot of hesitation on the part of Metro-North to get realtime information to customers is based on fear. Fear of action, fear of change, fear of being wrong, fear of being accountable, fear of failure.

In the online world, nothing gets done that way.
You take risks, make mistakes, fix them, and repeat.

What’s important is that instead of being fearful and keeping all of its info under its hat, Metro-North is trying really hard to get what it does know out there, so I’m behind them on this one.

Keep trying, Metro-North – keep taking risks, keep making mistakes, keep fixing them.

Yes, if our train is 20m late and we are standing on a cold platform in January and there is no acknowledgment on Train Time we are going to get huffy. We’re huffy because that sucks. But that doesn’t mean we don’t appreciate the effort and want you to keep working on it, and we definitely don’t want you to stop trying.

—-

The 8:57 AM out of Cos Cob (aka Train #1539), never arrived or passed the station this morning.

The 9:22 AM (#1741) out of Cos Cob was about 20 minutes late.

When my wife asked the conductor what happened to the 8:57AM, he said ’something went wrong’.

The only indication there was any issue whatsoever on the MTA’s new website was a brief 5-minute period where ‘Train Time’ for Greenwich showed the 9:25 (#1741) being late for a brief 5 minute period around the arrival time.

( FYI Cos Cob is not one of the stations covered by Train Time, neither is Stamford )

I could not check any of the other stops as it was a Greenwich express to GCT, and GCT Train Time only tracks *departures*, not arrivals.

The major issue with Train Time is that if your train is over 5 minutes late or so, it seems to just ‘disappear’ off of the Train Time table!

In other words, Train Time seems to only let you know if your train is on time or 5-10 minutes late. If the train is later than that there is no status.

Not helpful.

Anyone else have any experience with Train Time yet, good or bad?
Let us know in the comments!