Author Archives: kparmeland

WMT Update Completed / Whats my track?

Whats my Train is back up and running.



We are also excited about a new feature NJ Transit has created. They now have a web-based departure board available for most stations. The two missing stations are New York Penn Station and Hoboken. Having a departure board available from NJTransit.com gives us interesting opportunities.
Example: Secaucus Junction



One problem we face daily is during our run to the train we always have to strain to find which track our train is on once we get to the NJT station. It would be much nicer if we knew beforehand! Well, once NJ Transit adds Penn station to it’s departure board service, we might be able to solve our problem. We could setup an agent that checks the online departure board, and sends us an SMS once the track has been posted! Imagine the time we could save knowing our track number before we even enter the station!



In the meantime, we’ll continue our daily ritual of pushing people out of the way so we can catch a glance for the track number…all the while daydreaming about what the future may bring.

NJTransit Web Change

NJT has made a change to their webpage. They have added a “Date of Travel” field to their trip planner utility. This change has caused WMT to no longer retrieve trains properly. Since I was out late last night and needed to know whats my train i was VERY DISAPPOINTED!



I have made the necessary fixes and we should have it up and running again tonight.

LIRR

I got To / From working for LIRR yesterday (I thought I was working on Metro North whoops). Good news is that Metro North is almost exact as LIRR site, once LIRR is up and running we should have Metro North available shortly after.


Ian is working on handling the input from SMS and translating to station codes. Feels good to be working on WMT again!

Enhancements: Help / Trip Duration

2 more enhancements:

– By sending “Help” to hey@whatsmytrain.com, you will receive a short description of how to use all of WMT’s features



– Trip duration is now returned with trip times. Make sure you don’t miss that express train home! =)

New Feature: Fares

We’ve added a new feature to WMT.



Train fare information on the go!



Send a message in the following format:

fares [origin] to [destination]

WMT will provide you with One Way and Round-Trip fares for your trip



Enjoy!

Fixed: Alerts

Two problems we found and fixed with Alerts:




  1. Alerts feature was not accepting station names that contain more than one word (which is quite a few!)

  2. NJTransit Alerts RSS sometimes contains multiple lines in the alert text. We have updated the application to find each line name listed in the alert and match it with the inputted station(s).