Guide-A-Ride

[1] The Guide-A-Ride canister is vandal-resistant[2] and was designed for easy updating of the information displayed; though as a partly analog tool still requiring visits to the site – requiring some planning during the massive system-wide service reductions the MTA was forced to implement at the end of December 2009.

[3] The New York City Transit Authority (NYCTA, NYCT, or TA) first announced a plan for "metal diagrammatic maps of bus routes on bus-stop stanchions" in 1964.

[8] The prototype for Guide-A-Ride was developed in 1977,[9] the key novelty in the display of times to the minute the bus was due at the individual stop.

[11] Although skeptics doubted the ability of buses on New York City’s densely packed streets to show up anything like the times posted, on-time performance proved to be reliable.

Similar transit aids can be seen in at bus stops in other cities including Boston,[13] Atlanta,[14] and Los Angeles.