There’s an easy way to find out when the next bus is going to arrive. Text “mbta [stop number]” to 41411. The only thing you need to do is get the stop number, which you can find here.
Text messaging charges may apply, blah, blah, blah.
When’s the next bus?
by Sean Roche | Apr 2, 2012 | Newton | 4 comments
Also very useful, although I suspect it’s based on schedules, not real time tracking: if you open GoogleMaps on your smartphone, zoom in, and touch a bus stop symbol, a popup shows upcoming bus arrival times for all buses that stop there. I discovered this near the end of my recent trip to Austin, Texas, where I got around entirely by bus/foot. I thought it was great just to be able to text the bus stop number and get a text back, but with the map symbol method I didn’t even have to know the bus stop number.
Julie,
It’s based on real-time GPS data.
The map thing I’m talking about, too?
I don’t know about Google maps. I doubt that’s realtime.