Red Line Ashmont Train is Now Approaching

December 13th, 2023
transit
The MBTA has now fully fixed the sign issue I was complaining about! It's great:

Red Line
Ashmont Train is Now Approaching

For years I grumbled inside whenever I was approaching a station and saw the digital signs switch to "Attention passengers, the next red line train". This could signal any of:

  • 25%: My train is coming, I can catch it if I hustle.
  • 25%: I'm missing my train.
  • 50%: A train I don't care about is doing something.

If I waited the sign would switch to, for example, "to Ashmont is now approaching", but time when I'm trying to decide whether to hurry to catch a train is unusually precious!

The issue was that they were displaying a transcription of the audio announcement instead of tailoring the textual notification to the medium. Several months ago they fixed the arriving version, and recently they fixed the "approaching" version as well. Yay!

Comment via: facebook, lesswrong, mastodon, substack

Recent posts on blogs I like:

Let's Taboo the V-Word

Read this post on Substack.

via Home July 12, 2026

Thing of Things AI use policy

dynomight recently wrote an article calling for bloggers to state publicly whether and how they use AI

via Thing of Things July 6, 2026

Agentic test processes, LLM benchmarks, and other notes on agentic coding from Galapagos Island

I've been using AI fairly heavily since last November and the whole thing is a funny experience. An agent will do something that, if a human did it, you'd immediately fire them. My reaction, of course, is to act as if this is great and spin up a t…

via Posts on July 3, 2026

more     (via openring)