Testing HopStop
My wife asked me to escort her to a harpsichord concert this afternoon because it required multiple trains in an unfamiliar part of town (Long Island City). The concert promoters had sent out an e-mail with three different sets of instructions for reaching the studio, none of which made much sense so I decided to try HopStop instead. (Think MapQuest for public transit.)
The result were mixed. On the plus side, the directions were pretty much correct and HopStop was unbelievably accurate at predicting times. They said the trip would take 56 minutes. In fact it took 58 minutes door-to-door. Usually we allot two hours for a one-way trip to Queens.
On the minus side, HopStop didn’t seem to have any information about weekend route changes caused by construction. I had to adjust the route they suggested to account for the lack of #3 train in Brooklyn and the corresponding unusual presence of a #4 at our point of embarcation.
Overall, I give it a B+. If they could figure out how to account for temporary service changes, it would be an A.
