First-Ever Electronic Bus Status Display Installed in Manhattan

3:20 PM EDT on August 24, 2007

A camera phone-toting tipster reports seeing workers installing what appears to be New York City's first-ever real-time bus status display board this morning inside a bus shelter at First Avenue and E. 14th Street along the M15 route. We'll put in some calls to the MTA and DOT to get the details.

Unfortunately, for now it appears that the new displays can only be read and understood by bus riders fluent in Klingon.

Correction: The digital sign displays text smoothly. Our tipster's camera phone was unable to capture a clear image.

Update: A Dept. of Transportation source says that the MTA is installing 15 of these real-time bus information displays around Manhattan as a pilot program. DOT is responsible for the shelters, MTA is responsible for the electronic signs. The project is part of the city's contract with Cemusa, the company that builds and sells ads on the new bus shelters as DOT's sub-contractor.

Aaron Naparstek

AARON NAPARSTEK is the founder and former editor-in-chief of Streetsblog. Based in Brooklyn, New York, Naparsteks journalism, advocacy and community organizing work has been instrumental in growing the bicycle network, removing motor vehicles from parks, and developing new public plazas, car-free streets and life-saving traffic-calming measures across all five boroughs. Naparstek is the author of "Honku: The Zen Antidote for Road Rage" (Villard, 2003), a book of humorous haiku poetry inspired by the endless motorist sociopathy observed from his apartment window. Prior to launching Streetsblog, Naparstek worked as an interactive media producer, pioneering some of the Web's first music web sites, online communities, live webcasts and social networking services. Naparstek is currently in Cambridge with his wife and two young sons where he is enjoying a Loeb Fellowship at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. He has a master's degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and a bachelor's degree from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Naparstek is a co-founder of the Park Slope Neighbors community group and the Grand Army Plaza Coalition. You can find more of his work here: http://www.naparstek.com.

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