… and then I will let it go, because I know nobody cares. I reported last week that a stunted algorithm had LinkNYC’s “Local Bus Arrival” screens in all 5 boroughs seemingly obsessed with letting you know which buses were approaching Sutphin Boulevard and Archer Avenue in Jamaica, Queens. That problem cleared up the next day, after nearly 2 weeks during which no one at the Smart City or anywhere else seemed to have been aware of the problem.
I also reported last month that access to the MTA website was no longer possible from LinkNYC kiosks. Soon after I reported it the problem was remedied, but only ½ way. LinkNYC users can now access the new, BETA version of the MTA website. But the BETA status of the new site tends toward glitchiness, such as this one I encountered today when trying to use it to — what else? — find a bus:
Allowing access to a stable, working version of a website while its replacement is in BETA seems like sound and seasoned logic, and glitches like this illustrate why. But the old MTA site remains blocked, and that’s too bad, especially for anyone as confused as I am by the LinkNYC bus arrival content that appears on the big ad panels. That bus arrival content serves no useful purpose, but the old MTA website’s mobile/text version of the bus arrival time feature does the trick. That relatively humble looking interface is the only bus arrival time format that has ever made sense to me. You simply do not need the cosmetic heft of an interactive map — virtually impossible to navigate from a LinkNYC tablet, btw — for something like this when simple, bulletpoint-like location markers with approximate arrival times deliver what you need to know.
So while LinkNYC might have restored access to the new MTA site the old one remains blocked. Bus-related content on the new MTA site is glitched out with a useful “Error code: 820” message. Your only way of getting bus information out of these machines is to stand at one of the ad panels, wait an indeterminate length of time for a bus arrival screen to appear, and simply hope that that screen contains some piece of information related to a bus you need.
LinkNYC’s “6 millions users”
More evidence that someone driving the Smart City is asleep at the wheel comes from this puzzling announcement from CIVIQ, an entity that somehow puts itself at the center of the seemingly never-ending corporate/municipal quagmire of CityBridge/LinkNYC/Intersection/Control Group/Qualcomm/DoITT/Titan/WhoAmILeavingOut?…
The announcement, served from CIVIQ’s decidedly non-Smart-City unsecured http connection, describes a LinkNYC Valentine’s Day program said to have occurred earlier this year. Did. Not. Happen. LinkNYC’s “Valentine’s Day Surprise” happened in 2017 and 2018, but by my guesstimation someone must have realized what an embarrassment it was, which would explain why they did not do it again. The CIVIQ announcement also needs some damn copy-editing. This sentence does not quite parse: “Being a New Yorker is totally unique identity–the city belongs to them just as much as they belong to the city.”
I also wince at the repeated reference to LinkNYC’s “6 millions (sic) users”. The “6 millions” (sic) figure represents the number of people who have registered to use the free Wi-Fi since the kiosks first went live in 2016. By this logic LinkNYC’s user count could accumulate into the billions by the time the franchise agreement ends. In 10 years a memo like this one from CIVIQ might start with “LinkNYC’s billions and billions of users…”