User:Ɱ/Countdown clock

Countdown clocks are devices used in public transit systems to indicate when the next train, tram, or bus is arriving. The displays are part of a transit agency's passenger information system, used for displaying numerous aspects of a transit network.

San Francisco, London, Paris, and Toronto have had realtime countdown clocks for decades. Washington's WMATA installed the clocks in all stations in 2000. Boston's MBTA installed the clocks for most of its rapid transit lines in 2018.

In New York City
New York City's Metropolitan Transportation Authority began discussing the concept in the mid-1980s. The MTA operates the clocks by installing Bluetooth receivers on New York City Subway station entrances, exits, and on the trains themselves. For previous decades, the subway had relied upon fixed block signals to indicate roughly where trains were, a system used for countdown clocks installed for the subway's numbered routes from 2009 to 2011. With the automation of the New York City Subway and subsequent implementation of communications-based train control (CBTC), transponders and transmitters in tunnels relay exactly where trains are in real time. Lettered lines relying on CBTC had countdown clocks installed around 2016. All subway stations gained countdown clocks by the first day of 2018.

In 1996, the MTA contracted Orbital Sciences Corporation to design countdown clocks for city buses, a project that was abandoned four years later due to urban canyons, tight schedules, and traffic making the system unreliable. In 2005, Siemens was awarded $13 million to place countdown clocks on six bus routes; the pilot program was shut down in 2009. In 2007, 1st and 2nd Avenues in Manhattan briefly had countdown clocks. In 2009, countdown clocks were also installed at 34th Street bus stops, dismantled after two years. The countdown clocks were eventually replaced by MTA Bus Time, a real-time bus tracking website, between 2012 and 2014. With the implementation of MTA Bus Time, the NYCT also started adding countdown clocks at several bus stops in 2013. Beginning in 2018, LinkNYC kiosks in all boroughs are set to display bus countdown clocks in place of some ads.

The Long Island Rail Road, one of New York's commuter railroads, implemented countdown clocks in all stations in 2018.