Pigeon – Crowdsourced transit app for New Yorkers
pigeon.area120.com
pigeon.area120.com
I trusted the app when it said, “We won’t share this info with anyone.”
Here’s a screenshot: https://mobile.twitter.com/nicholasbs/status/113532302185253...
After setting it up I wondered how a free app with no ads or in-app purchases and which didn’t share your data could possibly make money, so I googled it.
I discovered that Pigeon is made by Google. I went back to the App Store listing to see how I could have possibly missed this and found there is no mention of Google anywhere in the App Store or the app itself unless you click through to the Privacy Policy.
There are, however, plenty of reviews from people confused why an app like this would only support sign in with Google.
FAQ Questions (now?) mention Google, but imply it’s a local team in “Google’s workshop”:
Q. How started?
A. After years of living in New York City and commuting on the subway, the Pigeon team knows first-hand that public transit can be frustratingly unpredictable. So when we started this project, we decided to create a product that lets subway riders help each other avoid delays, crowds, and incidents that make can make commuting so stressful.
Q.Who created this?
A. Pigeon is lovingly designed and built by a small team based in New York as a part of Area 120 - Google's workshop for experimental products. For the Pigeon team, being a part of Area 120 means we have the opportunity to create a new, experimental product that we can continuously test and improve to make sure it’s something that our users love. For our users, it means you get a chance to experience our app in its early stages and help shape the product as it grows.
Q. Only for New York?
A. Pigeon’s dream is to make it easier to get around all cities. But, since Pigeon is new and the team still has a lot to learn, we decided to start in our own backyard of NYC: home to the largest subway system in the US. We think starting here will help us figure out what works and what doesn’t as we move toward this goal.
Q. Android?
A. We’re currently focused on learning and testing with iOS users in NYC, but we hope to bring Pigeon to Android soon. Please sign up for our Android waitlist to be notified when it becomes available.
The Transit Heroes FAQ may be clearer:
Q. What would I get?
A. An opportunity to meet up with the Pigeon team and other Transit Heroes at the Google NYC campus.
To be fair, they developed an iOS app first and there currently lacks Android support. The Google Sign-in could just be a matter of prioritization and it's easier to implement this boilerplate at Google.
...I don't understand the value crowdsourcing provides, for transit.
Official real-time subway data is already provided by the MTA in all sorts of forms (apps, API's, etc.). I don't know what there is to crowdsource -- you can tell just by analyzing the data directly whether trains are stuck or not, and for how long. And if you're stuck in a train car, it's very rare you have any knowledge of how long the delay is going to be anyways -- conductor announcements are almost always just "we hope to be moving soon". Same if you're on the platform -- just a generic "trains are running delayed". And for big delays (a train being shut down between stations for half an hour, etc.) the MTA posts real-time notices explaining. So what's to crowdsource?
(Not to mention that if your train is stuck between stations and you wanted to tell the app why, tough luck -- there's no cell or Wifi service between stations anyways when you're underground, so you can't.)
There's always room to improve on transit apps, and crowdsourcing is hugely valuable for car traffic, but crowdsourcing+transit makes no sense to me, at least in NYC.
I've never used the API's -- only official MTA apps which presumably draw on the same data source -- but it covers all trains, and the train times have always seemed entirely accurate to me, if interpreted as "this is the minimum time the next train could take to get to you, from its current distance".
The apps certainly do take account of altered service (same as Google Maps does). Elevator closings are reported too, no crowdsourcing needed [1]. These are all official, non-crowdsourced sources.
Crowding is really the only interesting thing in my opinion -- but although I don't know of any apps that do it, it seems relatively easy to deduce from train history and known average hourly station usage per day, which is predictable enough to give decent results. But I'm not sure how often this provides value though -- how often is a station/train so crowded that you'll choose a viable alternate means of transportation in advance? Not often, in my experience, which is probably why apps don't offer it.
[1] https://advisory.mtanyct.info/EEoutage/EEOutageReport.aspx?S...