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:

Exercises in benchmarking and evals, part 7: DeepSWE, Senior SWE-Bench, napkin math, and winter tires

This is part of a series of exercises on benchmarking, evals, and experimental design (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)1. We're going to look at three questions, which are presented before the answers to give you time to think about the questions before seeing the a…

via Posts on July 23, 2026

Donation recommendations for effective altruists (July 2026)

My recommendation for donors who are American citizens or permanent residents is that they donate directly to high-value political candidates.

via Thing of Things July 22, 2026

Let's Taboo the V-Word

Read this post on Substack.

via Home July 12, 2026

more     (via openring)