Mobile Train Schedule<\/em> (mobiletrainschedule.com<\/a>) is an interactive schedule for New York City’s three major commuter rail lines; The Long Island Railroad<\/em>, New Jersey Transit<\/em> and Metro-North<\/em>. This isn’t an official site, it seems to be an ad supported service from Actuan Mobile<\/a>. The main feature is “Point to Point Train Times<\/em>“, a simple schedule lookup (top image), where you pick the start and end stations from dropdowns, choose the time of departure and day of the week and get a list of the next four trains between the two stations. Or you can choose “Now<\/em>” from the Day<\/em> of the week dropdown to list trains departing immediately. Another page offers complete timetables listing all stops and times for any train by train number (bottom image).<\/p>\n
This could be a handy site for NYC commuters. Usability could be better though. One thing that’s confusing is that when “Now<\/em>” is selected in the the Day<\/em> dropdown the time controls are ignored. For the time to be recognized, the Day<\/em> must be set to “Today<\/em>“, “Tomorrow<\/em>“, “Weekday<\/em>‘ Or “Weekend<\/em>“. As “Now<\/em>” is the default, I found this confusing and didn’t understand why changing the time was ignored. It’s not really logical for “Now<\/em>” to be a choice for the prompt “Please Select a Travel Day<\/strong><\/em>” (2nd Image). Another thing that could be improved is if the train numbers in the schedule lookup linked to the detailed schedule of stops for that train rather then requiring the user to go back several pages to enter the train number and get the details of that trip. Also the mobiletrainschedule.com <\/em>URL didn’t work on one of my phones, a Motorola i855. If you get an error or a non mobile page try using www.actuanmobile.com\/trainscheduleserver\/mainhomepage.jsp<\/a> which is what the first URL redirects to and works on the i855.<\/p>\n
Update 11-Apr-2009:<\/span> Yuri at trainlogic.net<\/a> pointed out that the schedules on the Mobile Train Schedule site and Java app are not current. I checked and there have been significant changes. I would advise against using Mobile Train Schedule for actual travel planning. Trainlogic has a nice Java based app that covers the New York City commuter rail lines has current schedules although it is not free.<\/p>\n
Mobile Link<\/em>: mobiletrainschedule.com<\/a><\/p>\n
Ratings<\/em>: Content: <\/span>
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<\/span> Usability:
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Filed in:<\/em> Mobile Site Directory – Travel-Transit\/Transit <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mobile Train Schedule (mobiletrainschedule.com) is an interactive schedule for New York City’s three major commuter rail lines; The Long Island Railroad, New Jersey Transit and Metro-North. This isn’t an official site, it seems to be an ad supported service from Actuan Mobile. The main feature is “Point to Point Train Times“, a simple schedule lookup (top image), where you pick the start and end stations from dropdowns, choose the time of departure and day of the week and get a … Continue reading