About WheresTheT.com

This site is a freely browseable database of MBTA transit alerts gathered from the T's website, mbta.com.

It is not affiliated with the MBTA or any other transit organization. WheresTheT.com is not an official source of transit information or alerts.

The site is designed for quick, efficient access from mobile devices (cell phone, Blackberry, iPhone). But it can be viewed by desktop browsers. RSS feeds and email alerts are also available.

How data is gathered

Transit alert information is posted to the MBTA's alerts page throughout the day. Every ten minutes this data is downloaded by WhereTheT.com and stored in a database. This involves a process known as "screen scraping." Because the data is not provided in anything but standard HTML markup, the site has occasional limitations.

For example, sometimes the HTML markup is written incorrectly on the MBTA's website and the XML parser has difficulty discerning where an alert begins and ends. Sometimes, for the same reason, information is lost during parsing and may not appear in this site's alerts. The MBTA provides no other source or feed of transit alert information as far as we know.

Active alerts are alerts that currently appear on the MBTA page. These are shown on the homepage in reverse chronological order until they are made inactive. Inactive alerts are those that have disappeared from the MBTA website and have likely been resolved. The history of T alerts is archived on the inactive alerts page and via the RSS feeds.

Who made this?

The site was created by Jesse Legg, a Somerville-based IT professional and web developer. Please send comments and questions to info@wheresthet.com.