By Kyle Alspach
For whatever reason, the MBTA Orange Line doesn’t extend to the Boston neighborhood of Roslindale, where I lived for two years.
To get to the subway at Forest Hills, you have to take a bus. And that means waiting for unpredictable amounts of time.
Actually, I could usually predict the amount of time pretty well: a long time. Lack of an easy way to get to the subway is part of what made moving to Jamaica Plain attractive for me.
But if the MBTA and Google are right, residents of Roslindale and the thousands of others who use the bus system should have a much easier time of things starting today (as long as they have web access).
That’s because Google has made Boston one of the first four U.S. cities to get live online updates for when the bus is going to arrive. You can get the updates by accessing Google maps on your desktop or mobile device (Google’s blog post can walk you through how it works.)
Bus riders probably won’t be the only ones to benefit. If it catches on, the tool could also be good for landlords and business owners in neighborhoods like Roslindale — with the technology helping to close their public transit gap with other neighborhoods.
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