Posts Tagged ‘MBTA’

Google maps Boston to a T

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009

Google has added Boston’s MBTA to its Google Maps GIS service, as of this morning. The new integration means Bostonians can map point-to-point routes and compare travel times by car, on foot, or by public transit – as on this map of the route from Mass High Tech’s newsroom downtown to MBTA headquarters in the Theatre District. Twitter user @j_b_f was first to notice the development, late this morning.

The MBTA this afternoon invited news media to a joint announcement tomorrow at 11 a.m. at South Station with city transportation officials and Google Cambridge’s engineering director, Steve Vinter. No details of the planned announcement were released, but the website Universal Hub reports officials will announce the new tool at the presser. A Google spokesman said the company is “evaluating data,” but has no information to release. MBTA officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

According to a report on the website Greater Greater Washington earlier this month, Boston and Washington DC were the only two major U.S. transit systems remaining without integration with Google Maps. Since 2006, the T has offered a wayfinding solution on its own website that provides much of the same functionality as the new Google integration.

The T and general manager Daniel Grabauskas are overdue for some good news this week, after three of the agency’s boardmembers wrote letters to state transportation secretary James Aloisi saying they have no confidence in Grabauskas’ leadership. The letters cited a damning NTSB report, out earlier this month, on a Green Line trolley crash that killed an operator in 2008.

Digital woman’s hilarious inability to pronounce “Natick” replaces Commuter Rail’s usual group groans with laughter

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

CommuterRailAshland
On Monday night, a disembodied, digital female voice announcing the station stops on the Worcester line of the Commuter Rail led to a human conductor with exquisite comic timing cracking up the herds being carted away from their paymasters.

The system had a couple of small glitches — it arguably mispronounces Worcester (”Wooooooster”) and definitely mispronounces Natick (”Nattick”) — which led to the first spontaneous, group laughter I’ve ever heard on the commuter rail. Delay-induced groaning tends to be the only synchronized noisemaking on the Commuter Rail.

On Tuesday, we were back to human announcements, so the automated announcements may have been a test — I’ve emailed a T spokesman, but haven’t heard back yet.

That doesn’t even make sense: MIT researcher makes camera out of fabric

Thursday, June 18th, 2009

As if MBTA drivers didn’t have enough to worry about, now MIT researcher Yoel Fink has developed a sheet of fiber with light sensors built in, making a flexible camera

Fink tells Technology Review the fabric could have applications in defense and in making large, flexible telescopes, though it hasn’t all been worked out yet.

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