A new MBTA tracking app launched today that could make a huge difference in the lives of students and other Bostonians who rely on the Green Line as a life line to other parts of the city.

The new Greenline app is far from unique in terms of being an MBTA-focused application — there are more than 80 different MBTA mobile applications available for use — however, its creator, Alex Grinman, an MIT senior, says the new transit app is different in that it uses real-time data for the Green Line, the most technologically ignored transit line in the city.
The new app, launched out of Paul English’s Blade startup studio, at which Grinman works as an intern, makes it easier for Green Line users to know when the next train will be arriving at whichever station they are waiting. When it is opened on a mobile device, the app finds a user’s location and the nearest Green Line station and then informs the users when the next train will be arriving.

While many stations now show up-to-date information on the arrival times of trains for the Red Line, Orange Line, and Blue Line, keeping track of Green Line trolleys has been a bit of a challenge.

Most Green Line trains run on rails that are for the most part above ground and travel near and across streets that are often heavily congested and rife with traffic lights. Also, because Green Line trolleys run in one of the oldest subway corridors in the nation, the reliability of the trains is anything but consistent. In the past, once the trains would leave their departure stations, the only way to find out their location was by calling the conductor. However, in the last year, the Green Line trains have been updated with better GPS tracking capabilities that make anticipating their arrival time easier for underground trains. And in October, the MBTA made real-time Green Line data (for the above ground trains) available to app developers for the first time. (Underground tracking data will be made available at a later date.)

The Greenline app puts a focus on a single line only; albeit one that is primarily used by the hoards students attending Boston College, Boston University, Northeastern, and other colleges that straddle the Green Line.
Grinman, who already has an MBTA-tracking app called Where’s My MBTA Bus? to his credit, said that after the success of his first app, he was constantly prodded about when he would build an application for the Green Line.

“Finally, the MBTA released the Green Line data, and a few other app developers made apps that incorporated the Green Line data,” Grinman said. “But none of them did it justice and I had my own vision of what the app should be, so I built it in January.”

“Our goal with this app was that once you open it, it should show you the next trains right away,” said Grinman. He added that while he will incorporate the underground Green Line train data once its released, he hopes that, at some point soon, Greenline users will have the ability to “crowdsource” the underground train location data by adding their own information on train locations while using the app.

From: www.betaboston.com