Boston Rail

---

Boston Rail provides real-time updates on commuter rail trains in the Greater Boston area including specific trips (for example, trip 510), station to station departure and arrival times (Back Bay to Needham Center, for example), as well as alerts for a line (such as alerts for the Fairmount Line).

*New* Added support for subway route alerts (Red, Orange, Blue, Silver and Green B, C, D and E lines)

To get started, you can say:
Alexa, load Boston Rail or Alexa, enable Boston Rail

Boston Rail supports both conversational and natural language commands.

You can use the following commands to start a conversational dialog with Boston Rail (for example: Alexa, Ask Boston Rail for Departures):
DEPARTURES: Provides departure and arrival times for a pair of stations. You will be asked for your departure and destination stations.
ARRIVALS: Provides arrival and departure times for a pair of stations. You will be asked for your destination and departure stations.
ROUTE ALERTS: Provides alerts for a given route. You will be asked for a route name.
TRIP STATUS: Provides the status for a trip number. You will be asked for a trip number, such as five ten (510).
NEXT INBOUND: Provides the status of the next inbound trains for a given station. You will be asked for a station.
NEXT OUTBOUND: Provides the status of the next outbound trains for a given station, you will be asked for a station.
TRAIN LOCATION: Provides the current location of a given trip number (if it is actively running), you will be asked for a trip number.

Many other natural language interactions are supported, such as:

Alexa, Ask Boston Rail for train from West Roxbury to Back Bay
what is the status of train four twenty one?
where is trip ten fifty five right now?
are there any alerts for the Fitchburg line?
when is the next train from Shirley departing?
when is the next train to West Hingham arriving?
get the next trip from Andover

The Boston Rail Alexa Skill was written by Charlie Christina. The realtime data feeds for the Commuter Rail are provided by The Massachusetts Department of Transportation. Charlie Christina and Boston Rail do not represent Mass D O T, the MBTA or its agencies and authorities. The MBTA Real Time data feeds are used under the Massachusetts Department of Transportation Developers License Agreement (http://www.massdot.state.ma.us/Portals/0/docs/developers/develop_license_agree.pdf)