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Comment by trgn | Hacker News Reader

It's absolutely crazy to me! I can see my uber driver on my phone stopping to pick up a pretzel from the convenience store, but I can't see where the bus is or get any kind of estimate of when it's going to arrive at the busstop.

On vacation this summer in europe, all tram stops had estimated arrival times. Ridiculous, 5-10 minutes out at worst, they wouldn't even need the electronic signs, just a placard that says "just skim your phone for a bit, it'll come".

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You are describing a well-off high density city in Western Europe.

I unfortunately live in "we used to have trams, most of them were scrapped in favour of bus lines, then the bus lines were scrapped because they were not profitable enough, go buy a car" Europe.

> You are describing a well-off high density city in Western Europe.

Yeah..

Grass is greener I admit.

Where is that?

> but I can't see where the bus is or get any kind of estimate of when it's going to arrive at the busstop.

Not true in New York City. See all the busses and all the stops. Estimated number of passengers and arrival times.

https://bustime.mta.info/#m4

Portland Oregon as well. There are a variety of apps that use the API to get arrival info from Tri Met, and all train stops, and many bus stops, have displays.

I've taken transit in a few US and Canadian cities. Most of the time there was some app that reported the live location of the busses and trains in transit.

Often I could get the data through Transit, but sometimes they have their own app.

https://transitapp.com/

Trams and buses tend to be more unreliable because they use the same streets as cars (sometimes they get extra lanes, but not always). Metros tend to be more reliable in my experience, I can usually trust what it says on the electronic sign (one big exception is Cologne where the metro isn't a real metro and runs on the street half of the time).

This was belgian coast (long story), trams have dedicated right of way and don't share the street with the cars. Peak tourist season too, which may explain the subway-like frequency.

However in Cologne, to my big surprise, trams, despite running in the streets and in a real maze of crossings underground, manage to always be on time when I use them. S-Bahns on the other hand, seldom are...

Stadtbahns use the "U" sign for U-Bahn when only part of their network is underground; I guess this is to avoid confusing riders.

You might have been lucky. The "metro" in Cologne is notoriously unreliable, to the point that there's even a word "KVB minutes" to explain why sometimes the train will be arriving in 2 minutes for about 10 minutes.

Yeah, in the US the Chicago 'L' and SF's BART are usually at least honest about any delays. Buses will sometimes just... not come.

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